Nadya Tolokonnikova recalls a high-octane video shoot

I was incredibly excited to shoot Pussy Riot’s music video at Lenfilm because it’s a place of great historical significance and value to every Russian citizen, not just artists, but everyone. And I was incredibly happy. And on the way there, I’ve heard that the police visited Lenfilm prior to our video shoot And I was a little bit concerned because I knew... I know that Russian police follow Pussy Riot all the time. But I was hoping that this time everything will go fine because we are not making an illegal action. Um, everything is perfectly legal, so there is no reason why we should be in trouble. We came there… the building is beautiful. The set was amazing. We saw over 200 activists, LGBTQ+ activists, feminists who have decided to join us for this shoot because we made an open call on my Instagram about it. But unfortunately, two worlds had to collide on that day. The world of free, beautiful people of the future Russia and the world of cops. The cops came, um, to the shoot. They accused us of gay propaganda. They accused us of extremism. They accused us of homosexuality. And they cut off the electricity and the heating. We didn’t have electricity. We were trying to film with our phones. We were trying to use portable lights. And most of the… most of the footage that you see right now in the music video “Rage,” we filmed after the electricity was cut off. So, it doesn’t look like it had to look. We filmed only, maybe, 10% of what we wanted to film, but we still decided to put the footage together and release it later, to show that we are not… it’s not so easy to beat us. But, in a way, it was a magical experience. As you can imagine, with no heating, it gets really, really cold in Russian winter. So, we were all freezing in that building. We didn’t have any electricity, but we loved each other and we bonded with each other so much because when the government puts pressure on you, you bond with each other, that’s what happens. And we went around the building. We made some beautiful pictures. We looked like ghosts because we were already in make-up. and there was this amazing, beautiful drag queen, Lorina Rey, who didn’t have a chance to appear in the music video because we were kicked out of the building by cops. But we have pictures of her in complete darkness, with just flashlight, looking like a ghost in this old Soviet building. For a lot of us, it was a bonding experience and we were... Up to this day, after a year, um, I’m making multiple feminist and LGBTQ projects with those people who I met at that shoot. We supported women’s shelter in one of the really dangerous regions of Russia for women and gay people and, and numerous other projects.