RELEASED IN 2013 and directed by Mike Lerner & Maxim Pozdorovkin, "Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer" is a documentary about the feminist/anti-Putin Russian punk rock collective, Pussy Riot, and the arrest & trial of three of its main members (Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich) for their offensive protest "performance" at a Moscow cathedral in 2012 wherein they were charged with hooliganism motivated by enmity toward a religious group and disturbing the social order.I have an obvious message for these three women (aged 22, 23 and 29 respectively at the time of the events): If you don't want to go to jail don't enact hateful criminal protests. Let me put it this way: What if several conservative Christians visited whatever dive they "perform" at and carried out a mocking, hostile rant against them and their ilk? They'd be incensed and immediately put a stop to it, not to mention press charges to prevent it from happening again.Speaking of "performing," the girls' music is laughably trite punk ditties. Separated from the political hype, their cacophonies wouldn't register even a blip on the punk/rock/metal barometer.A couple of the females are asked what they're protesting against and one of them says they're objecting to the (supposed) Russian expectation of women to have babies and do little else in society. But (1.) no one's forcing her or anyone else to have babies and (2.) the movie itself shows women in all kinds of significant professions in Russia, including two judges, a prominent lawyer and police officers. It's a classic case of rebel without a cause. If they don't like Putin, fine, vote against him and look into becoming a politician. If you don't like the conservative sway in current Russian culture, then do your part to respectfully influence society to your point of view, which would include offering a positive example of your (supposedly superior) belief system.Instead, these women opted for outrageous acts in their 3-year protest against the Russian government, culminating in the sacrilegious incident at the Russian Orthodox cathedral: They stuck poultry up their you-know-whats in supermarkets, spray-painted vulgar graffiti on bridges, staged an unbelievable public orgy at a museum when Nadya was eight-months pregnant, which is actually shown in the movie for like 10 seconds (two clips). Seriously? In response, Putin expressed "I'm surprised they weren't arrested prior to this." So am I.The flick is evenhanded in that it lacks a biased narration and simply shows the actual footage, translating the Russian verbiage into English, with a smattering of interviews with parents, husbands and whoever. It's a fascinating documentary in that it reveals modern Russian culture, its predominant values and lunatic fringe. I was surprised to observe that the elder disciples of the Russian Orthodox Church resemble formidable American bikers more than anything else.Despite these positives, I'm not giving the film a higher rating because it foolishly sides with the girls. Which is baffling since anyone with a modicum of common sense can see that they got precisely what their doofus behavior deserved. If a group of conservatives in America did what these women did, but enacted toward liberal people & institutions, they'd be lambasted by the lamestream media and imprisoned for years for hooligan hate crimes. Of course loony libertines are notorious for their hypocritical double standards.THE MOVIE RUNS 1 hour 28 minutes.GRADE: C-

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.

First of all, this is not a "musical punk group". No one ever heard any song from them, except maybe their ridiculous performance in the Churh. Let's quickly recall all their public so called "performances":1. Public sex in a botanical museum, which was video taped and uploaded to the internet. If you google it, you still have a good chance of finding it. I believe the team was call "Gruppa Voina" at that time.And if I'm not mistaken, they celebrated Medvedev's presidency in such a way. Tolokonnikova was 9 month pregnant at the time.2. Other members of the team carried out a frozen chicken in their vaginas out of a grocery store. Kids and other people were present. videotaped and uploaded to the internet.3. Tolokonnikova and others hang by neck in a grocery store several mannequins representing visual minorities (people of Asian background). Public was present in the store. Again, "the performance" was videotaped and uploaded.4. And of course, the famous performance in the beautiful Christ the Savior Church. Usually people are required to be quiet and decent in this place. Yet they cursed, jumped, etc. I'm surprised that visitors didn't beat and kick them out. If it hadn't happened in Moscow but in some rural church, that would have been the most probable outcome.If it's art, or "political protest", then I'm from Mars. It's good that finally they were stopped before they did something even more outrageous. And if they haven't learnt the lesson - well, Mr. Putin is not going anywhere any time soon.