MIDDLE-EARTH TIMELINE
Khraniteli (Хранители, The Keepers) is a Soviet television play adapting The Fellowship of the Ring, produced by Leningrad Television and broadcast in two parts on April 13 and 14, 1991. It was directed by Natalya Serebryakova and Costel Tudor Voica, with Valery Dyachenko as Frodo and Victor Kostetskiy as Gandalf, and music by Andrei Romanov of the rock band Akvarium.
Shot on videotape in a few days with a tiny budget, it follows the story from Bilbo's birthday party to the breaking of the Fellowship, and keeps scenes often left out of other adaptations, such as Tom Bombadil, Goldberry and the Barrow-wight.
Shown only once, it was long thought lost until Channel 5, the successor of Leningrad Television, put it on YouTube in 2021. Its theatrical sets and homemade effects quickly made it a cult curiosity around the world.
Frodo leaves the Shire with the Ring and sets out with the Fellowship, in a low-budget Soviet television play shown once in 1991 and rediscovered thirty years later.
