I Loved You All: Film screening about Russian poet Boris Ryzhy

Film screening about Russian poet Boris Ryzhy.

Join us for a special screening of Aliona van der Horst’s documentary film about Russian poet “Boris Ryzhy”. Through conversations with neighbours, family and friends, she pieces together a picture of the passionate and complex life of the poet. The evening will open with a short introduction by Oleg Dozmorov, who will read a few Ryzhy’s poems. The film received several awards including the Best Feature Documentary at the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2009

The name Boris Ryzhy (1974-2001) came to light at the break of the century – just a few months before his untimely death. He was referred to as “the most talented poet of the generation”, while his poems, written in the 1990s, have affected the Russian contemporary literature in the most profound ways. Ryzhy, who took his own life when he was just 26 years old, has played a pivotal role in Russian poetry by talking about ordinary people through the prism of timeless values in a clear and approachable language, like Pushkin. He was compared with other famous Russian poets, Mikhail Lermontov, and the young Joseph Brodsky, however Ryzhy is a distinctly original writer with his own voice and range of subjects. In 2000, he received an Anti-Booker – a major Russian literary award.

The Russian poet Boris Ryzhy was handsome, gifted, and achieved considerable literary fame. So why did he take his own life at the age of 26? A quest to find the answer takes the filmmaker to the criminal neighbourhood in the cold industrial city of Yekaterinburg where Boris grew up. Through conversations with neighbours, family, and friends, she pieces together a picture of the passionate and complex life of the poet. What emerges is a penetrating portrait of the Perestroika generation, who lost all certainties, becoming a generation of criminals and bodyguards. Despite it all, Ryzhy loved this unhappy world, populated half by prisoners and half by their guards. He tried to transform its ugliness into the philosopher’s gold of poetic prosody.