“Pinocchio” Iosifov: “Tortilla turtle” Rina Zelenaya was afraid of drowning | Movies | culture

Actor and director Dmitry Iosifov, known to the Soviet audience for his role as Pinocchio in Leonid Nechaev’s film of the same name, told about unusual cases on the set.

In 1976, Iosifov’s “Pinocchio” was recognized and loved throughout the USSR after the two-part musical television film “The Adventures of Pinocchio” by Leonid Nechaev based on the fairy tale by Alexei Tolstoy “The Golden Key, or the Adventures of Pinocchio”, created in the film studio “Belarusfilm”.

An ordinary 9-year-old schoolboy from Minsk was on the set surrounded by solid legends: Rolan Bykov, Rina Zelenaya, Yuri Katin-Yartsev, Vladimir Etush, Elena Sanaeva and others. People’s Artist of the RSFSR Rina Zelena, who played Tortilla the turtle, was 74 years old at the time of filming. There is a famous episode in the musical film where she sings “Romance of Tortilla Turtle” over the pond with the words “I myself was like this three hundred years ago.” According to Iosifov, this episode was filmed with difficulty – the artist was afraid of drowning.

“It was very funny when Aunt Rina refused to go on a raft – that huge green leaf with a chair on which she was sitting,” recalls Iosifov in a conversation on aif.ru. She looked like that and said, “I’m not going there.” They tell her: “Everything is stable, excellent design, don’t worry, it’s just a real raft, the car cameras are inflated. And only a sheet of foam rubber is painted on top, so don’t worry, the raft will withstand anyone, even the entire film crew. Rina Zelenaya replied: “Well, show me.” And the artist had to drive 18 people onto the raft. When she saw that she wasn’t drowning, she said, “Okay, okay.”

It should be noted that Dmitry Iosifov became an honored guest of the Crystal Source festival, where he held a number of children’s master classes.

The 1st Children’s Film Festival “Crystal Istochnik” was held in Essentuki with the support of the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives. According to the president of the festival, Honored Artist of Russia Euclid Kurdzidis, it was previously held within the framework of the festival of popular film genres “Crystal Source” as a project “Cinema campus-children”, but in the last two years it has become an independent event.