I’m a big fan of documentaries and an even bigger fan of sitting on my fat ass and not leaving the house, so HBO’s summer documentary series is relevant to many of my interests. It kicks off tonight with Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, which has me all discomboobulated because it has both “pussy” and “prayer” in the title.
On Feb. 21, 2012, members of the feminist art collective Pussy Riot, donning their colorful trademark balaclavas (ski masks), participated in a 40-second “punk prayer protest” on the altar of Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral before being detained. Arrested and tried for trespassing, wearing “inappropriate” sleeveless dresses and disrupting social order, Nadia, Masha and Katia were accused of religious hatred in a trial that reverberated around the world and transformed the face of Russian society.
An official selection of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, where it received the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Punk Spirit, PUSSY RIOT: A PUNK PRAYER tells the Pussy Riot story offering exclusive interviews and unprecedented access to courtroom footage when it kicks off the HBO Documentary Films summer series MONDAY, JUNE 10 (9:00-10:30 p.m. ET/PT), exclusively on HBO.
Two years in prison seems like a pretty stiff sentence to those of us who believe in free speech. CONVERSELY, if you’re Iowa Republican Steve King, who spent the last week hanging out with Steven Seagal and the FSB, the Russian successor agency to the KGB, “It’s hard to find sympathy for people who would do that to people’s faith.” Yep, he really said that. Like, in public and everything. I’m not sure if you could get away with saying this in Russia, but since I’m in the US I should point out that idiots like Steve King should be in dunking booths, not congress.
In any case, Pussy Riot seems like the perfect documentary subject, because I’ve heard about the story a lot, and I feel like I still don’t know that much about it. KNOWLEDGE ME, HBO. KNOWLEDGE ME RAW. Cram it right in my think hole.
Trailer:
Director featurette: