Section Archive One on One
Jan Macháček - music and journalism, before the revolution and after
Journalist and musician Jan Macháček has lived an interesting and varied
life both before and after the Velvet Revolution. In the 1980s he came to
be known as a guitarist from the underground bands Plastic People of the
Universe and Garáž. After the revolution he began writing for the
independent weekly newspaper Respekt, his work earned him a great deal of
recognition, and he is regarded today as one of the Czech Republic’s
leading economic and political commentators. As Central Europe marked 20
years since the fall of the Iron Curtain, I met with Jan Macháček – on
his way back from Berlin and off to Poland for the commemorations – and
asked him to recall what his life was like before the great turn of events.
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Communist deputy chair Josef Skála: reforming the regime was the ambition of my generation
Twenty years after the fall of Czechoslovakia’s communist regime, the
Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia has retained both its communist
label and much of its ideology. In this edition of One on One, our guest is
Josef Skála, who recently became one of the party’s deputy leaders. He
shares his views on the totalitarian regime of the past and the party’s
prospects in the future.
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Václav Novák: a man for managing a crisis
Václav Novák is a crisis manager. And with the ongoing economic crisis
following on the heels of the financial crisis, things have been pretty
busy for him. He has been in the headlines a lot recently after being
bombarded into a top position at state-controlled carrier Czech Airlines
(ČSA) and then suddenly stepping down. But he has a long line of Czech
companies that he has pulled back from the brink, including steel making
giant Vítkovice. I met him in his central Prague office and asked him if
he was surprised by the government decision not to go ahead with a sale of
Czech Airlines to the sole bidder.
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Richard Drury – English curator at home in Czech art world
Not long after moving to Prague at the start of 1991, Englishman Richard
Drury began working as a curator at the Central Bohemian Gallery,
previously known as the Czech Museum of Fine Arts, on Husová St. He has
been there ever since. Remarkably for a foreigner, he is also chairman of
one section of the venerable Czech cultural organisation Umělecká
beseda.
When we met, I asked Drury if it had been hard to find a place in
Prague’s art world. More
Aleš Rumpel, head of the Mezipatra Queer Film Festival
This autumn, the Mezipatra Queer Film Festival will celebrate 10 years of
showing gay and lesbian-themed films to the Czechs. The festival is held
between October 23 and November 8 in Brno, Prague and several other cities
around the country, under the motto “The Third World War of the Sexes”.
In this edition of One on One, our guest is the festival’s director Aleš
Rumpel who explains what the main focus of this year’s Mezipatra is.
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Clapton and Harrison’s muse - Pattie Boyd
The model Pattie Boyd was the inspirational force behind two of the
greatest modern musicians, “quiet Beatle” George Harrison and the
legendary Eric Clapton. Both her former husbands – also very close
friends – immortalised her in some of their most famous songs and
popular
ballads. Now on display in Prague’s Old Town is a collection of
Pattie’s private photographs from the inside of that triangular love
story, the unintended moral of which is that behind every great man – or
two - is a great woman. “Layla” herself was in Prague to share her
memories as well, and she told me about how her life’s fortunes started
taking shape around the age of 20. More
Alan Babický – Respected golf pro on golf in the Czech Republic
This week’s guest in One on One is Czech golf pro Alan Babický. A
skilled businessman but also former dancer, choreographer and downhill
skier, Babický picked up the sport of golf at the fairly late age of 28.
But within ten years he had built up a solid reputation, even winning the
World Golfers’ Championship in Thailand in 2004 – one of the most
prestigious competitions for amateur players. Recently I caught up with
Alan Babický to discuss his career; the first thing I asked was how much
he knew about golf the first time picked up a club 15 years ago. More
US translator Norma Comrada on how she learnt by translating Karel Čapek
Karel Čapek is one of the few Czech writers whose work has transcended
borders. Although he died prematurely, aged 48, during the dire year of
1938, in the course of his short lifetime he wrote over 20 prosaic works as
well as several plays and travel books. Many of these have been translated
into English – and our guest in this edition of One on One is Norma
Comrada, an American who translated several of Čapek’s collections of
short stories, and his 1938 play The Mother. I met Ms Comrada at a most
appropriate venue – Karel Čapek’s study on the top floor of his former
villa in the Prague area of Vinohrady.
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Astronomer Jiří Grygar on a life of promoting stargazing and scepticism
It’s pretty fair to say that anybody in the Czech Republic who knows
anything about astronomy has learned at least some of it from Dr. Jiří
Grygar. Something of a Czech Carl Sagan, Dr. Grygar has been a frequent
personality of Czech and Slovak television screens since his popular
programme “Windows Wide Open to Space” in the late 1970’s. He was the
chairman of the Czech Astronomical Society and is one of the founding
members of the Czech club of sceptics, Sisyfos, which battles pseudoscience
and charlatanism in the Czech media. I met Dr. Grygar in his tiny office at
the Physics Institute of the Academy of Sciences, and asked him to tell me
about how he first became interested in his life’s passion.
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Prague restaurants improved but standards need to match prices, says food critic Laura Baranik
Laura Baranik is one of the Czech Republic’s best known restaurant
reviewers, writing a regular column in the Saturday edition of the
newspaper Lidové noviny, as well as running her own blog, The Prague
Spoon. During her short career, the 25-year-old has developed a reputation
for demanding high standards, and earned the enmity of some restaurateurs,
who are perhaps unused to such exacting criticism.
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