PUSSY RIOT: A PUNK PRAYER
HBO, 9:00 p.m. ET
If you know the Soviet performance protest artists Pussy Riot only as a late-night punch line, or a musical act endorsed by Madonna, this 90-minute documentary will be very, very educational. Without narration, but with lots of behind-the-scenes and news footage, it shows the genesis of Pussy Riot as an all-female, anti-Vladimir Putin “feminist punk group,” dedicated to shaking things up and protesting the Soviet intermingling of church and state. The Pussy Riot story isn’t simple, or predictable – two of the three young women arrested and imprisoned in 2012, for attempting to perform a song at the altar of a Russian Orthodox Church, have young children. And one, Nadia, has a history of provocative social protest that includes being part of a group that had public sex at a biology museum, and another protest movement that involved videotaping her, and other activists, “Kissing a Cop,” surprising uniformed officers, male and female, to make some point about something. But even if some of their actions are unclear, this documentary explains other Pussy Riot motivations perfectly, such as why they wear brightly colored masks, and why and how they protested their own arrests and trial.