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NewsDocumentary film about coal mining threat to town wins Jihlava prize

NewsKaplický documentary wins prize at Warsaw festival

Czech BooksSidra Noach, a novel about Prague’s Jewish community in the time of floods

In the summer of the 2002, Prague was hit by one of the worst floods in the city’s history. The swollen Vltava inundated parts of the historic centre, including the Jewish quarter, which had to be evacuated. This dramatic scene is the setting for the new Czech novel Sidra Noach by David Jan Novotný. The name comes from the weekly readings from the scripture. As it happened, the story of Noah was read in the synagogue just as the waters began to recede.  More

Current AffairsPlans underway for first Czech museum dedicated to former German speaking minority

The first German speakers settled in the Czech lands in the 13th century, and in the interwar period there were around three million ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia. That changed completely after World War II, when almost all of them were forcibly expelled from the country. Now, however, their history is being reclaimed – with plans to open the first museum in the Czech Republic dedicated to the country’s former German minority.  More

Czech BooksPetr Ginz: a moving dramatization of a wartime diary

It is not often that school plays get to be performed at international theatre festivals, still less so when it involves taking performers, props and scenery hundreds of miles half way across a continent. But this is just what happened when a group of teenagers from Britain brought a brand new play to Prague’s Fringe Festival in 2008. And it was not by chance that this play was brought to Prague. In this week’s Czech Books, David Vaughan finds out more from the play’s author.  More

ArtsNew documentary takes close look at Czech BDSM scene

Thursday saw the premiere of a new documentary on HBO Czech Republic by respected filmmaker and cameraman David Čálek. Called Heaven, Hell – the film was aired as part of HBO’s Bez Cenzury (Without Censorship) series tackling issues rarely examined on the big or small screens. Heaven, Hell is a year-long look into the lives of four people deeply involved in the BDSM scene – that is bondage, domination, and sadomasochism. More

PanoramaFebio demise marks the end of an era in Czech documentary filmmaking

Perhaps the most successful Czech documentary film studio, Febio, has produced over 1300 programmes since it was established in Prague in the early 1990s. At the height of its activity, its authors made over 100 film documentaries a year that were mostly screened by the country’s public broadcaster, Czech Television. But this week, Febio’s founder and director Fero Fenič announced the studio’s closure.  More

Current AffairsEquine war memorial unveiled at Napoleonic battlefield site near Brno

A war memorial with a difference was unveiled this weekend at a famous Napoleonic battlefield near Brno. The life size bronze statue stands out immediately from similar memorials to war heroes and generals from the fact that it features a horse with no one in the saddle.  More

NewsCzech documentary films to be shown at US independent film festival

Current AffairsCzech Children of Stalinism documentaries to feature in New York festival

Children of Stalinism is the title of a series of documentary films about the often harrowing experiences of daughters of political prisoners in 1950s Czechoslovakia. It has just been announced that four of those films will feature in the New York Independent Film Festival, which takes place later this month. To find out more, Radio Prague spoke to the project’s producer, Zuzana Dražilová.  More