When the US government sanctioned the beating and arrest of US citizens for swaying from side to side in the Jefferson Memorial a couple of years ago, it provoked no response from the Western media (and therefore the Western zombie-citizens who rely entirely on the media for their 'opinions'). Yet the Russian government, sorry, 'Putin' (because everyone knows Putin is a dictator, right?) is broadly denounced as a 'tyrant' by these same Western zombies (again because their 'outraged opinion' was deftly inserted into their brains by the Western media) for putting a stop to the ugly spectacle of deranged Russian women sticking chickens up their nether regions in supermarkets, daubing outlines of phalli on bridges, staging lewd events in a museum and cavorting around like retards in Russian Orthodox churches as part of their 3 year long international attack on the Russian government.Even the name 'Pussy Riot' strongly suggests that this band of nihilists has always viewed the English-speaking world as their main audience. If informing the Russian people about problems in Russian society was their main goal, surely a Russian name would have been top of their list of requirements. But that's not the job with which these self-described 'Trotskyists' were tasked. Their job is to provoke a reaction from the Russian government which can then be used by Western governments and media to launch an 'anti-Putin' propaganda offensive to prepare the ground for a plausibly 'popular uprising' against the Russian government. As we have seen recently in Ukraine, foreign governments can be 'legitimately' overthrown by a relatively small group of Western government-backed protesters without either the input or support of the vast majority of the population of the host nation.http://landdestroyer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/who-or-what-is-russias- pussy-riot.htmlThe Guardian's article titled, "Pussy Riot trial 'worse than Soviet era'," opens immediately with overt propaganda, describing the courtroom and Russian flag as "shabby" and a police dog as "in search of blood." The British paper attempts to portray Russia itself as having a "stark divide" between conservatives and liberals, the latter fighting against the state "with any means it can." Already the Guardian runs into trouble - by portraying Russia as "divided" it is dismissing recent elections that granted Vladimir Putin and his United Russia party a sound mandate to lead the country. And while it is true that in reality, between voter turnout and Putin's garnering the support of 63% of those that did turn out (in a 5-way race), only about 40% of Russia's total registered voters actually voted for Putin, his mandate is still sounder than that of US President Barack Obama's 32% in a mere 2-way race, or last year's victory here in Thailand by Yingluck Shinawatra with a tenuous 35%, a victory hailed by the Western media as a "sweeping" mandateHelping to push down on this political lever are propaganda outfits like the Guardian, portraying the trial as a case of liberal Russian opposition groups fighting against a judicial throwback to the Soviet Union. In reality, it is another Wall Street-London production in the same vein as Serbia's US-funded Otpor movement, the Kony 2012 fraud and the US-engineered "Arab Spring."

British producer and documentary filmmaker Mike Lerner and Russian producer and documentary filmmaker Maxim Pozdorovkin's documentary feature which they produced, premiered in the World Cinema Documentary Competition section at the 29th Sundance Film Festival in 2013, was shot on locations in Russia and is a Russia-UK co-production. It tells the story about a Russian citizen in her twenties from a town called Norilsk, Russia named Nadezhda Andreevna Tolokonnikova who in the late 2000s joined a group called Voina with her husband named Pyotr Verzilov, a Russian citizen in her twenties from Moscow, Russia named Maria Vladimirovna Aliokhina whose favorite word as a child started with the letter U and consisted of five letters and a Russian citizen in her thirties from Moscow, Russia named Ykaterina Stanislavovna Samutsevich who became interested in something after reading French philosophers. Distinctly and subtly directed by documentary filmmakers Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin, this quietly paced documentary which is narrated from multiple viewpoints though mostly from the band members' point of view, draws an informative and humanistic portrayal of the front figures of a 21st century Punk rock protest band who made themselves known by conducting performances in public places like the Red Square without having asked for permission beforehand which is obligatory there, and whom after planning a new protest at the Russian parliament called State Duma and performing a protest against the union of state and church on the altar of a renowned cathedral in early 2012 aiming to take Christianity away from the official church and give it back to its origins was arrested, put on trial, convicted for hooliganism and relocated to expiate in penal colonies in Russia. While notable for its atmospheric milieu depictions and reverent cinematography by cinematographer Antony Butts, this narrative-driven story about a federal semi-presidential republic where the president is head of state and a generation who doesn't agree with the politics of the current regime and who practices oppositional art to voice their opinions, which through interviews with family members, attorneys, government officials, Russian citizens and Pussy Riot themselves describes a Russia where its people wishes to live in an ordinary country and which was made twenty-tree years after a German rock band sang the words: "The wind of change blows straight into the face of time …" contains a timely score by composer Simon Russell. This somewhat biographical, historic and remarkable testimony of real events which is set mostly in Russia in the 21st century and where the ruling government passes amendments as they please whilst a group of distinguishable Russian daughters and mothers who are against some of their political policies and with musical instruments, lyrics and balaclavas expresses their views regarding their country of origin which they think is depriving them of their entitlement to influence its fate, creates humorous though far from publicly respectful or lawfully justifiable works of art which has heart, humor, audacity and social intellect beyond its appearance, is impelled and reinforced by its cogent narrative structure, rhythmic continuity, trial and archival footage, photographs and comment by Masha: "It lives in the word. It will go on living because of glasnost." A dense and concentrated documentary feature.

Some North American reviewers have dismissed PUSSY RIOT - A PUNK PRAYER for its lack of objectivity in its presentation of the three Russian girls, who dared to perform punk songs at the altar in Moscow's Orthodox Cathedral. I think that 'subjectivity' is precisely the film's point; the girls were tried and sentenced according to the subjective will of the Russian government. In a truly democratic society, different subjectivities are allowed, but not in Putin's Russia, where the girls are expected to apologize for their 'crimes' before being sentenced. Mike Lerner and Martin Pozdorovkin's film unfolds over the course of six months, taking in the performances of Pussy Riot, the trial and its aftermath. While you might not agree with what the girls actually did, they do have a point; they were simply trying to express their views, not incite religious hatred (as the authorities accused them of doing). In the current context, where individual struggles for freedom are being experienced in other territories, as well as Russia (Egypt, the Turkish Republic), PUSSY RIOT - A PUNK PRAYER offers a salutary lesson: the girls are not alone in trying to assert their democratic rights to free speech. Hopefully this film will be given a wide distribution, to make viewers worldwide aware of its important message.

It's challenging for North Americans to grasp that there's still danger in speaking your mind in many places in the world. So while we all knew of Russian punk collective Pussy Riot and we all heard about the arrest and prosecution of three of its members after an impromptu performance of "Punk Prayer – Mother of God, Chase Putin Away!" on the soleas of Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior, we might have been left a little befuddled about the exact magnitude of the uproar. The documentary Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer, from directors Mike Lerner and Maksim Pozdorovkin, goes a very long way in casting light on the situation.The power of "punk" is hackneyed in the West by now, but Pussy Riot and members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich prove that in the more repressive areas of the world it still has the power to provoke. And while the women of Pussy Riot became a cause célèbre in the West, with such supporters as Madonna, Yoko Ono, and Amnesty International, we learn from Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer that the opinion of the Russian public was far more complicated and divided. While there's no doubt where the bias of this doc lies, the directors do an admirable job of documenting the turmoil surrounding three young women who stand on the courage of their convictions.Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer is one to see. If you're not lucky enough to be in Toronto during HotDocs 13 or you can't score a ticket to any of the 3 screenings, HBO has bought the film and announced plans to air it June 2013.