MADE IN RUSSIA

I practically choked on my breakfast bagel when I read in “Deep in the Heart of Russia” (by Carol J. Williams, June 16) that “Anna Karenina” “is the West’s first film to be shot entirely on location in Russia.”

Back in 1991, I worked on not one but two films produced by Menahem Golan that were shot entirely in Moscow (“Hit the Dutchman” and “Killer Instinct”) under his L.A.-based 21st Century Films banner.

Golan also produced “Dance Macabre” and a remake of “Crime and Punishment”; Roger Corman made “Haunted Symphony”; Just Betzler did a film on the 1991 coup called “Three Days in August”; Greydon Clark directed a pair of thrillers in St. Petersburg; and last-year’s well-reviewed “Mute Witness” was just released on video. All of these films had financing from “the West” and were filmed entirely in Russia. There have been several others.

ANTHONY DiSALVO

Los Angeles

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My “Zigzag” was shot in Moscow in the summer of 1994. We had no “Tower of Babel” on the set. Everyone spoke Russian or English. My Russian crew were the hardest-working and nicest bunch of film people I have ever known.

ROBERT J. NOWAC

Blue Ocean Pictures Corp.

Santa Monica

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