Talk:Vladimir Arsenyev

Dersu Trilogy
I'm confused about the trilogy. In English translation is a book about Dersu that covers three expeditions, it is a single volume. In Russian, there are three books about Dersu. Is the English translation a composite of all three Russian volumes, or only one? -- 71.191.42.242 (talk) 04:23, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I think the English edition covers all the three original books Alex Bakharev (talk) 12:14, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Kurosawa and Dersu Uzala
This article's previous version stated that "Arsenyev's book called the attention of Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa," who then decided to make a film of it. The story I know is quite different: Kurosawa was in a very bad phase of his life, struggling against alcoholism and unable to get financing to make his movies, which led him to a (fortunately failed) suicide attempt. As a desperate last resort, he turned to the then USSR, who was more than eager to boost its reputation of making only dull, ideologically-charged "socialist realist" movies and make a great production with an acclaimed director of international prestige. They suggested Dersu Uzala to him and the rest is history: a masterpiece was born.

Since I cannot substantiate all this story, I just altered the phrasing to remove the previous suggestion (or statement) that Kurosawa just decided to make a film of it, adding also a mention to a previous Soviet movie about it and the Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film in 1975. --UrsoBR (talk) 12:37, 6 January 2009 (UTC)