Bosenko Valery Ivanovich
Few at Gosfilmofond knew that the head of the department of bio-filmography and international relations, the modest and friendly Valery Ivanovich Bosenko, was an archivist of world renown, author of several books and numerous articles in the Russian and foreign press, and a translator from Italian and French.
Born in 1948 into a simple family in provincial Astrakhan, he became interested in cinema as a teenager and, after leaving school, went to Moscow to study at the film studies faculty of VGIK. He studied brilliantly and graduated with honours. He worked as an editor at the Lenfilm studio and, after military service, joined the research department of Gosfilmofond in 1973, serving the cause he had chosen in his youth devotedly for forty years, until his death in 2013.
He especially loved Italian cinema and became perhaps the best specialist in that field. To read the necessary materials in the original and to translate films, he studied Italian persistently for four years alongside his work, eventually mastering it perfectly. Bosenko wrote articles on Pasolini and Fellini, took part in preparing their works for publication, translated Bernardo Bertolucci and Gilbert Adair's screenplay The Dreamers, and compiled the unique reference book 100 Directors of Italian Cinema. From 1990 to 1994 he taught a course on the history of foreign cinema to film studies students in Rostislav Yurenev's workshop at VGIK, and defended his candidate dissertation.
His interests were not limited to the history of Italian cinema. He was fond of poetry and music, compiled Bulat Okudzhava's collection Drops of the Danish King. Film Scripts. Songs for Cinema (1991), took part in the releases of the compact discs Songs from Films to Okudzhava's Verse (1997, 2004) and Music of the Arbat Yard (2002), and was one of the first to notice the beautiful voice and heartfelt performance of songs and romances by the young dramatic actor Oleg Pogudin; he wrote the book Portrait of Oleg Pogudin about him and assembled the cycle of film essays Sentimental Romance-2000. Requiem for the 20th Century (for the centenary of Russian cinema), including romances performed by the singer. In 2012 the Guild of Film Scholars and Critics awarded Valery Ivanovich Bosenko the Miron Chernenko prize for honour, dignity and contribution to the profession. In 2013 the book Marina Tsvetaeva. A Free Element. Poems by Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov in French Translation was published, which he compiled; it proved to be his last work.