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What's the connection between Virginia Woolf and the Russian mafia? Easy - in 1991 Sally Potter decided to film Orlando, one of the loveliest, most ravishing novels in the English language. Somewheres in the middle of the story there, you have a truly extraordinary sequence about the remarkable Frost Fair of 1654, which was when the River Thames itself froze over and they erected a fair with stalls and games and rides and greased pigs and whatnot on it, a carnival of the utmost brilliancy right on the river itself, and there was skating and flirting and people built fires, right on the river itself, and Orlando cut a dash amongst the Elizabethans and many curious and longing glances were thrown.

So Sally Potter needed a frozen river. Where do rivers freeze these days, what with global warming?

Kiev. The Dneiper.

So they went to Kiev and got permission to film from the newly elected Ukrainian local government. Signed all the forms in triplicate, paid their taxes. Great.

But then the hotel door banged open and some big guys came in and said to Sally Potter and her pals

We know you have made arrangement with the politicians. Now you must make arrangement with us.

Who?

Just the boys who really run Kiev, is who.

So they paid some more taxes. And didn't ask for a receipt.

I remember Sally potter telling this story with great gusto when I saw her introduce this movie at Nottingham's arthouse. In retrospect, she thought it was hilarious. Not while it was happening.

Orlando is a lucent multicoloured gleam of a novel, bending the gending a few decades before we even realised that trannies weren't little radios anymore, before we realised that boys will be girls will be boys and that it's a mixed up muddled up shook up world.

Except for Orlando.