1991 Russian film version of The Fellowship of the Ring resurfaces on YouTube
6 May 2021 | Beyond Bree, May, 2021, 8
A newly rediscovered copy of a Soviet TV film production of The Fellowship of the Ring from 1991 (the year the Soviet Union collapsed) has been uploaded to YouTube after being “lost” for years on the shelves of Russian Channel 5TV, the successor organization to Leningrad TV, who produced and aired it. It has proved wildly popular, with over a half million views.
After the publication of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (1954−55), translations followed quickly in Holland (1956−57) and Sweden (1959−61), where translated literature is widely accepted. The Polish translation (1961−63) was right on the heels of the Swedish one and ahead of the Danish (1968−70), German (1969−70), and French (1972−73) translations, but the publication of a state-sanctioned Russian translation was a long time in coming in the totalitarian Soviet Union.…
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