The film focuses on several key moments from the history of the group which was founded as a reaction to the re-election of  Vladimir Putin as president of Russia. Their strategy was to appear in different public spaces (subways, squares, luxury-stores) and to shock the public with their socio-political messages, namely to criticize  the excessive nationalism of Putin,  the capitalism, the authoritarian regime or to fight against a male view of the world.

photo emoviz.com

In 2012, feminist activists from Pussy Riot performed a concert inside the Christ the Savior Cathedral,  the holiest place from Moscow for any Orthodox  believer, space which symbolizes the union of church and state. They decided to perform at the altar in their usual way: wearing coloured balaclavas, tights and minidresses, screaming a punk prayer and waving their hands in the air. As a result of this agit-prop guerilla-performance, three members of this group were arrested.

Featuring  interviews (with the band members, with their families who support their daughters, with the pro and con protesters) with publicly available footage (courtroom footage, DIY videos of their rehearsals and performances, speeches of Putin or of church leaders), the documentary tells the story of these three members: Nadia, Masha and Katia. The filmmakers try to understand the real people behind the masks, they try to illustrate the  way in which their act (a 40-second punk prayer protest) became an event of national, even global importance  and to present the  absurd and injust trial they had. The girls were sentenced to two years in a women’s corrective labor colony where they are still today, except Katia, who was released on probation, following an appeal.

photo rapidmoviez.com

The purpose of this documentary is obviously a political one. Speaking about Pussy Riot  already implies depicting the background in which the scandal occurred, namely contemporary Russia. The two directors portray a conservative Russia, a system rotten from head to tail, with corrupt politicians who use the Orthodox church to maintain their authority and with a society that is not ready to understand the performance art activism. In this context, any protester who tries to break the status quo, to free the society from prejudicies and stereotypes is considered from the beginning a Bolshevik, a real demon.

photo saltypopcorn.com.au

The documentary (rewarded with a World Cinema Documentary Special Jury award for Punk Spirit at Sundance Film Festival and bought by HBO)  assume  a form of social criticism because it describes  various kinds of discrimination. The film directors are trying to avoid the dogmatism, so they chronicle the event in a dialectical manner, showing  the two sides of the scandal (the most intriguing exemple: the Russian Orthodox Church calls for a prayer meeting at the cathedral to protest against Pussy Riot).

Created just in six months, the documentary has the aspect of something improvised: it dramatizes the information we have already from the newspapers, but it doesn’t offer us a deeper understanding of the problem;  it deserves though to be seen, as an honorable document of a subject of such relevance.

by Andreea Andrei

Andreea Andrei studied Performing Arts (Arts du Spectacle) at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. For the moment she is an independent researcher, interested in the critical potential of art and in the artistic power of criticism.

The post MOTHER OF GOD, CHASE PUTIN AWAY! appeared first on INHALE MAG.

After years in documentary filmmaking (a powerful example is Animal Love, a documentary about the strong relationships between people and their pets), the director has turned to fiction, making films like Dog Days (2001) and Import ̸ Export (2007). Even if he says that he is not interested in portraying reality and that his work is “very artificial, strongly dependent on carefully constructed imagery”, the mixture of documentary and fiction techniques is widely used in his filmography.  He blends authentic details with staged ones, professional actors with amateurs, a structured dialogue with an improvised one.

photo spiegel.de

The three films of Paradise Trilogy: Paradise: Love (2012), Paradise: Faith (2012) and Paradise: Hope (2013) are released separately so they can be watched separately. This boschian triptych continues his previous work, focusing on desperate lonely contemporary women. Satirically titled Paradise Trilogy, the films show with a cruelty à la Haneke the  ruinous ways in which the characters are struggling and failing to conquer the Happiness, through Christian values like love, faith and hope.

photo spiegel.de

In the first part, Teresa (Margarethe Tiesel), an obese 50-year-old lonely woman,  leaves her teenage obese daughter Melanie (the central character of later Paradise: Hope) in the care of her sister and goes for a solitary vacation in Kenya. This exotic destination is the pretext for Seidl to explore themes like sexual tourism, colonial relations, exploitation and women’s liberation. Following the advice of a friend she meets there, Teresa starts to hook up african beach boys (taxi drivers, vendors) just to satisfy her lack of love and her sexual desires, in exchange of money. But soon we figure out that the exploitation is mutual (while the white women treat the local boys as commodities, the kenyans, on their turn, take advantage of the money of the European women), and that the pursuit of love is futile and tormenting.

photo spiegel.de

The second part portrays the intimate life of a middle-aged fanatic woman: Anna-Maria (Maria Hofstätter), the sister of Teresa from Paradise:Love is a medical technician, who devotes her free time to  missionary work and religious rituals. More precisely, she walks on the streets of Vienna, from door to door, carrying a statue of the Virgin Mary to bring people (mostly immigrants) to the right path, to Christianity. At home, she flagellates herself or plays religious songs on her electronic keyboard.  Everything changes when her disabled Muslim husband appears home, unexpectedly, after two years of absence. Anna-Maria turns to be not so compassionate with her husband as Jesus would demand, treating him  in an offensive way.

photo spiegel.de

She completely ignores him, she forbids things to him, she refuses to have sex.  Instead, she gives in all her love to Jesus, sublimating her erotic desire (in a provocative scene, because of which Seidl was accused of blasphemy, Anna-Maria is masturbating herself with a huge crucifix).  The husband replies in an aggressive way, so the conflict between them is getting worse, occasion for Seidl to refer to the aggravation of the war between Christianity and Islam.

photo spiegel.de

We said that the work of Seidl has the air of a grotesque realism, in a bakhtinian sense. He is interested in the human body as it is dominated by the primare needs, in the human body treated as an object. He uses exaggerated, grandiose grotesque images and grotesque situations (sexual orgies, sadomasochism, profanation) to explore degradation and depravation. Despite the fact that he is oftenly accused of cynism, misanthropism or pessimism, Ulrich Seidl manages to keep a humanist regard toward his characters generally put in embarrassing situations and to induct a form of empathy for the viewers.

photo spiegel.de

by Andreea Andrei

Andreea Andrei studied Performing Arts (Arts du Spectacle) at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. For the moment she is an independent researcher, interested in the critical potential of art and in the artistic power of criticism.

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