Kino-horoscope

[igenlode]

YouTube just bestowed upon me a recording of the poem by Venjiamin Smekhov (who played Athos)...

And it then gave me a recording of the complete interview from which this was taken (but without the subtitles), and then the next day the complete programme from which the interview had been taken (a one-and-a-half-hour episode of "Kino-panorama" from 1979). The miracles of modern technology; I wonder if it actually identified that the same video clip appeared in all of them, or was going on a "people who were interested in this were also interested in..." basis?

It is also amazing that an obscure Soviet TV magazine episode from the 1970s survives on YouTube, although in this case from the title of the YouTube video it is obvious that it was uploaded specifically because it featured those four actors rather than because of any of the material in the remainder of the programme. Even if Igor Starygin, who apparently declined to participate in the publicity interview, appears only in a clip about 'actors at home' where he is seen struggling with a typewriter :-P

However, what the longer context *does* provide is an explanation for the more obscure references in the poem: Smekhov mentions that he wrote it because they were filming in Lvov (now renamed 'Lviv' to reflect the tight Ukrainian accent, which still strikes me as akin to relabelling Glasgow as "Glasgae" ;-p) in August at the time of his birthday. It's a 'kino-horoscope': Lvov, the City of Lions (as in Lev Tolstoy, sometimes Anglicised to Leo) under the European astrological sign of Leo in the Chinese astrological Year of the Horse 1978.