The final weekend of this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival is upon us, and tonight’s program includes the last of three screenings of Pussy Riot—A Punk Prayer (Pokazatelnyy Protsess: Istoriya Pussy Riot), which I saw as part of a packed audience last week. This 90-minute documentary directed by Maxim Pozdorovkin and Mike Lerner is focused on the three members of the Russian punk collective who were charged with ‘hooliganism motivated by religious hatred’, after they attempted to perform a protest song in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral on 21 February 2012. Overall, I agree that the film is slick, and more superficial than searching, but still found it an invaluable source of context for some of the collective’s history and ideas, and for the severe treatment and sentencing faced by Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova.

In December last year PEN Melbourne took part in a worldwide initiative in support of these women. At La Mama’s Carlton Courthouse Theatre, volunteers took turns to read aloud from the closing statements made by Alyokhina, Samutsevich and Tolokonnikova on 8 August 2012, at their trial in Moscow’s Khamovniki District Court (you can download the statements here, or read them here). We were all moved by the women’s unflinchingly articulate critique and reflections. There’s no doubt that they’ll continue to need such poise under scrutiny; such incisive words.