Keep My Words Forever: screening of a film (ENG SUB) about the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam followed by Q&A with the director Roma Liberov

The documentary Keep My Words Forever tells a story of Osip Mandelshtam, one of the most significant Russian poets of the twentieth century. The poet's rebellious spirit challenged the Soviet authorities and he was arrested for 'counter-revolutionary activity'. Mandelstam's own prophecy was fulfilled: "Only in Russia poetry respected so much that it gets people killed. Is there anywhere else where poetry is such a common a motive for murder?" Mandelshtam was sentenced to deportation to Siberia and died in a transit camp near Vladivostok on 27 December 1938, starved, sick, frozen and mentally ill. Witnesses remembered that during the last months of his life Mandelstam was succumbing to insanity. The name of Osip Mandelstam was prohibited for more than 20 years after he passed away. Only in the second half of the 20th century Mandelstam's creative work became well known and appreciated. Mandelshtam's wife Nadezhda literally saved the poet's speech memorising everything he had written. As it was too dangerous and illegal to keep any records containing Mandelshtam's poetry for more than 20 years Nadezhda spent every night learning, silently reciting his poems and copying by hand in order to save them. Only thanks to her memory we can read these poems today. "Osip Mandelshtam is one of the most important poetic events that happened to the Russian language in the twentieth century. At the same time it's one of the most tragic fates in the history of our literature. His poetry is extremely tied up to the epoch he lived in and its events," says Roma Liberov, the director. The film encompasses a wide range of various genres and mediums: documentary, motion graphics, collage, street art, animation, digital art and puppet theatre.