Still from Tarkovsky’s Stalker.

Oooo! Author Richard Kadrey just posted a heads up –via an old OpenCulture post– that there are a bunch of Andrei Tarkovsky films up in various places on the web to watch for free. Looks like most of the links are still good. And it’s the weekend. Time, perhaps, to get some epic post-War Soviet eeriness on?

I have no idea what you’re talking about, so here’s a vaguely phallic thumb-faced thingy singing a duet with a vaguely labia majora-lipped pussycat. In Russian. Honestly, I have no idea what they’re talking about, either. Wheeee!

Hey, Nadya! Welcome back from the playa! We can haz translation?

(Via E. Stephen Weirdo.)

Free Pussy Riot! #freepussyriot from Peaches on Vimeo.

Well, it happened. The Pussy Riot verdict has been announced. The girls have each been sentenced to two years in prison for performing their one-minute “punk prayer” in the Christ The Savior Cathedral to protest Russia’s fusion of church and state. ”Even though we are behind bars, we are freer than those people,” said Pussy Riot band member  Nadezhda Tolokonnikova from her glass cage on the last day of the trial. “We can say what we want, while they can only say what political censorship allows.”

Below, a free poster by Molly Crabapple. Download the hi-res here. Print, post, mashup, and share. (Or buy a limited-edition 17″ x 22″ print to support their legal fund from Molly.) FREE PUSSY RIOT!

In early 2012, the Russian feminist punk band/avant grade group Pussy Riot staged several disruptive performances in Moscow. Inspired by Oi! bands, the riot grrrl movement, and an diverse slew of cultural thinkers, the band donned colorful ski masks, armed themselves with electric guitars, and sang in protest of the  devastating violations of civil rights happening under Putin’s regime.

Back in February, Mer blogged about the band’s “Punk Prayer” – an incident in which the band stormed Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral for an impromptu performance. The lyrics of the song criticized the Orthodox Church’s corrupt alliance with Putin’s government, asking Mother Mary to deliver Russia from Putin’s third term. “Virgin Mary, Mother of God, become a feminist,” the girls sang before they were dragged away by the authorities.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Mariya Alekhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich, the three jailed members of Russian punk collective Pussy Riot

After the performance, things got dark for Pussy Riot. Three members of the group were arrested, thrown in jail, denied bail, and held without trial for months. They have been charged with “hooliganism,” and are facing up to seven years in prison. At time of writing, the women have spent 117 days in jail, with the trial postponed for months longer. This is without any family visits, despite two of the girls being young mothers.

Shit is fucked up and bullshit in Russia. Putin has just exponentially increased the anti-protest fine, riot police are savagely beating anti-Putin protesters, and the homes of opposition leaders just got raided. Moscow has just placed a 100-year ban on LGBT pride parades, and St. Petersburg has banned any images of “gay propaganda.” Meanwhile, Russia’s Kremlin-controlled media has done its best to sway public opinion against the girls, painting them as “blasphemous” criminals bent on destroying the entire Russian Orthodox religion. In this climate, it’s likely that the three members of Pussy Riot will be convicted. In fact, just 7% of Russians believe that the band should not somehow be punished.

Luckily, Pussy Riot’s plight has started to gain international attention. Solidarity demonstrations are happening around the world, there have been enthusiastic benefit shows, and Pussy Riot has caught the attention of the art world. In Russia, more than 100 of Russia’s best-known cultural figures have signed a letter urging for the band to be released. Abroad, musicians including Kathleen Hanna have taken up the cause, and Anti-Flag released a Punk Prayer cover in support.

What can you do to help? For one, spread the word. Organize a local benefit, or donate to their legal fund (note: at time of writing, the site freepussyriot.org where you can donate is down, but most of the time it’s running). Take action with Amnesty International, urging the Prosecutor’s Office to drop the charges and release the band. Stage a protest at your local Russian Embassy  or Russian Orthodox Church. Take pictures. Show the band that they are not forgotten.

“Teenagers in Space” (Отроки во Вселенной) is a 1974 Soviet children’s sci-fi film about evil robots. In the film, a group of clean-cut teenage “pioneers” embark to a distant planet in the Cassiopeia constellation. There, they discover that robots have taken over the planet and enslaved the humans with one intention – to make their masters happy, as the robots understood happiness.

In one memorable scene, stylish robots offer to give the young cosmonauts a “Happiness Makeover.” In the futuristic operating room, sleek white sarcofagi encase the teens while robots calibrate the machine to erase their feelings of love, sorrow, shame and self-doubt. It turns out that their robots’ understanding of happiness is the satisfactions of basic needs, and the elimination of all  ”disturbing” emotions.

The teens learn that a small group of humans had escaped from the “Great Enhappening” and that their descendants have been orbiting the planet for generations. Together, they figure out a way to bring down the robots’ oppressive regime.

The film is available in its entirety on YouTube, but perhaps the best way for an English-speaking audience to experience the film is through the video below, which combines footage of the film with Kraftwerk’s “Robots.” See below.

Directed by Jimmy Marble and written by Marble and Doug Sacrison (who also wrote the original one-act play), Red Moon chronicles the sad, tortured life of famed submarine captain Alexei Ovechkin: hero of the former Soviet Union, and werewolf.

What follows is 15 minutes of amazing, cardboard and plywood sets, fantastic facial hair, werewolf suits, and terrible, terrible Russian accents. I loved every single second of it.

Great googly moogly:

The riot grrl ethos is alive and well… in Russia! The above footage of an anonymous feminist punk band called Pussy Riot was shot earlier this month. From the Guardian‘s coverage:

Eight women stood in a line opposite the Kremlin, neon balaclavas hiding their faces, fists pounding the air in rugged defiance. Before police carted them off, the members of Pussy Riot managed to shout their way through a minute-long punk anthem: ‘Revolt in Russia – the charisma of protest / Revolt in Russia, Putin’s got scared!’ [Full lyrics here.]

(via)

Since the band formed last September, they’ve been attracting all kind of press with their colorful, expletive-laden anti-Putin protest performances. Huffpo reports:

The group’s current membership, including crew, stands at around 30 people, most of whom are college-educated, hardcore feminists, according to founding members of the band who spoke to the Guardian. They told the paper many members of the band met at small protests and monthly demonstrations aimed at voicing a range of grievances against the government, including political corruption, state monopoly on the media, and banned gay pride marches.

All members of the band are sworn to anonymity, even when giving interviews, because “it shows we can be anybody,” a member told the Guardian.

More recently, Pussy Riot crashed Moscow Cathedral to perform an impromptu rendition of their song “Holy Shit”, and a surrreal, even sublime sort of inverse Benny Hill hilarity ensued:

No doubt, they’ll be striking again soon. Revolution girl style now! (Via Cal Trumann, thanks.)

And just so that you don’t think Russian children’s books are all sunshine and rainbows, here’s an illustrated version of the French tale Bluebeard from the Soviet era. For all the full images, click here.

We often talk of how Disney films teach children outmoded lessons about gender – both boys and girls receive terrible lessons about how to construct their identity. Cinderella, for instance, teaches us that “if you’re beautiful enough, you may be able to escape your terrible living conditions by getting a wealthy man to fall for you.” The Little Mermaid says, “it’s okay to abandon your family, drastically change your body, and give up your strongest talent in order to get your man. Once he sees your pretty face, only a witch’s spell could draw his eyes away from you.”

Perhaps it’s good to have a children’s book that tells the story of misogyny straight-up, without wrapping it up with singing animal sidekicks and happy marriages. Beautiful illustrations, creepy tale.

Cvetik-Semicvetik, or “the flower with seven colors,” is a beloved tale from the USSR. There are many different illustrated versions out there, but perhaps the most trippy one comes from the mind of Russian artist Benjamin Losin. Losin apparently illustrated two different versions of this book, both of which are included here.

The story, lots more lush illustrations, plus a 1948 cartoon version of the tale, after the cut!

One of the most acclaimed films of all time, and certainly one of the artfully made/broadly influential propaganda pieces created to this day, Sergei Eisentstein‘s 1926 feature film The Battleship Potemkin presents an exhilarating (not to mention highly dramatized, sometimes outright fictionalized) depiction of the 1905 mutiny of a Russian battleship’s crew agains their Tsarist commanding officers. Eisenstein made cinematic history with his development of the montage concept, and his unflinching use of realistic violence.

Via Jess Nevins comes word that we can watch the entire thing, uninterrupted, on teh YooToobz. It’s the version with the Shostakovich score, too. Pretty awesome (in the traditional sense of the word, even)!