2013-09-16T15:13:54+02:00 Radio Prague http://radio.cz/en/section/one-on-one/ivan-shvedoff-prague-based-actor-is-mr-eastern-bloc-in-western-movies urn:uuid:9f5c26e5-1db0-5fcf-a5c1-495d4914291d 2013-09-16T15:13:54+02:00

Actor Ivan Shvedoff moved to Prague at the end of the 1990s from his native St. Petersburg. Since arriving here he has extended his filmography greatly, with roles in a number of Hollywood movies and Czech productions such as Mamas and Papas. Shvedoff is also big in Germany and Austria, where he does a lot of TV work. When he stopped by at our studios, my first question for the Russian actor was what led him to move here in the first place.

urn:uuid:9a92d823-8775-543a-9811-516d26d22a30 2013-09-09T16:15:39+02:00

On Monday, the NGO Auto*mat is unveiling a monument at the very spot where founding member Jan Bouchal was killed while cycling in Prague. And September will be busy for the group, with a project to turn an embankment into a pedestrian zone about to begin and an annual day of street festivals scheduled for later in the month. Tereza Vohryzková is one of the people behind Auto*mat. When we spoke, she said its main activities included encouraging alternatives to car transport in the city and changing attitudes to public space.

urn:uuid:e9ebf430-9866-56bb-a4c4-563e271be983 2013-09-02T15:41:09+02:00

Josef Svoboda is a professor, Arctic ecologist and author. Born in 1929 in Prague, Mr. Svoboda studied science and philosophy at Masaryk and Charles universities. He was imprisoned for nine years by the communist regime in 1949 for alleged treason and espionage and then emigrated to Canada in 1968, where he has lived ever since. I began by asking Svoboda about his earliest memories of growing up in pre-war Czechoslovakia.

urn:uuid:469a30ed-6f17-58b9-8307-a62197e14afe 2013-08-26T15:57:45+02:00

After fleeing from her native Prague in August 1968, Liba Taylor made a new life for herself in the UK, where she studied photography under a member of the prestigious Magnum Photos group. From her base in London she travelled extensively, documenting the work of major international humanitarian agencies – including the UNHCR, UNICEF and Save the Children – in some of the poorest and most desolate spots on earth.

urn:uuid:dc3c2778-00fa-5fed-a213-c9697405a75b 2013-08-19T14:56:59+02:00

Russia’s new law banning the “promotion” of homosexuality has come in for much criticism internationally – and is only the latest occasion on which Moscow has found itself at odds with Western opinion. But does the Kremlin care what people outside Russia think? And what are the chances of its “sovereign democracy” someday giving way to genuine democracy? One person well placed to discuss these questions and more is Lenka Kabrhelová, who was Czech Radio’s Moscow correspondent from 2008 to this spring. My first question for Kabrhelová when we spoke: Are there ways in which the Russians try to keep foreign journalists in line?

urn:uuid:c5b44c90-bbd3-5a2b-a319-6d41180d6852 2013-08-12T13:47:52+02:00

The third Prague Pride has just got underway, with a week of events celebrating sexual minorities due to culminate in a huge parade through the city on Saturday. On the eve of the event, I spoke to its director Czeslaw Walek about a range of issues, including Prague Pride’s relations with the current and former Czech presidents. But as this year’s theme is coming out my first question was what Walek and other LGBT leaders can do to make that process easier for those who are still in the closet.

urn:uuid:8cff5a7b-e705-5a01-baaf-3a7cb91dc9cd 2013-08-05T17:03:49+02:00

Mikoláš Růžička is perhaps best-known as one half of the guitar pop duo Republic of Two, who a few years back were named Best New Act at the Czech equivalents of the Grammys. However, this summer he is performing at festivals around the country with Piano, a project that began with an LP recorded in his apartment and has grown into a full band. Růžička comes from a South Bohemian village where his dad is the local art teacher, and alongside his career in music also works in the visual arts field.

urn:uuid:6cdddd1e-7e17-5401-9cbe-75414825bdbb 2013-07-29T14:31:45+02:00

Lukáš Houdek is a man of varied interests. As well as being a photographer who has explored the post-war massacres of Czechoslovakia’s ethnic Germans, he is co-curator of an exhibition entitled Transgender Me that gets underway in Prague on Monday. In addition, Houdek, a Romani Studies graduate, writes for a leading Roma affairs website; indeed, for much of our interview I was under the mistaken impression that he himself was a member of the ethnic minority.

urn:uuid:5d14086f-c113-541a-85e3-9bd8fe5999d1 2013-07-22T14:59:53+02:00

Formerly a sleepy, in some parts grimy, neighbourhood, Vršovice has in recent times become one of the liveliest districts of Prague. Much of this activity centres on Krymská St., home to the very successful Café v lese and several other relatively new businesses. One of the people responsible for the rejuvenation of Vršovice is Kateřina McCreary, owner of the popular café-bar Sladkovský. When we spoke there, I asked McCreary what had inspired her to open the place three years ago.

urn:uuid:550e141b-6c85-59cc-af95-bc062e1e279d 2013-07-15T15:44:56+02:00

More than a decade ago Derek Sayer, a professor of history at Lancaster University, published an immensely popular book entitled 'The Coasts of Bohemia', which covers Czech history and culture from its mythical past all the way until early twentieth century. Its readers have been eagerly awaiting a continuation of the accessible and highly detailed work that opened up Czech history to a wider audience. This year, professor Sayer published a new work - ‘Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: A Surrealist History’, which focuses in on the Czech capital and the tumultuous last century.

urn:uuid:65d702f3-ead4-5485-8176-297b423d0f2d 2013-07-08T16:05:07+02:00

As managing partner for the central and southeast Europe region for the global accounting giant Ernst & Young, Magdalena Souček has frequently topped lists of the most influential women in Czech business. With her doctor parents coming and going from Czechoslovakia, she spent part of her childhood and youth in Western Europe before studying in the U.S. and beginning her career there with Arthur Andersen. But when Communism fell in her native country, she soon returned to set up a Czech branch of the firm – at a time when even basic amenities were hard to get.

urn:uuid:48a9374d-624d-5f23-b534-82c05c4bf7dd 2013-07-01T16:17:54+02:00

The sultry voice of young Sara Vondrášková there in the song Lay Down, which has launched her from the cafes and clubs of Prague to the silver screen, as the title song for the new Czech film noir Ve Stínu. The jazz student’s bewitching contralto and modern compositional sensibility is giving her some well earned prominence in the next generation of singer/songwriter/composers. Our guest in this edition of One on One, Sara Vondrášková tells us first of all how she’s begun to move away from her home ground in jazz.

urn:uuid:11d0e6f0-c4cb-5ce0-b260-dcbc9adc27b7 2013-06-24T17:07:51+02:00

A long-time resident of Prague, Douglas Arellanes has been involved in internet innovations in this country since the early 1990’s. A few years ago, he became one of the founders of Sourcefabric, an organization that creates open-source online tools for media organizations all over the world. Douglas began by telling me about how he was first enticed to come to Czechoslovakia from Los Angeles, having received a letter from his friends who at the time founded the newspaper Prognosis, the precursor to The Prague Post.

urn:uuid:35c1ea0e-38e8-59e3-8e78-9b4aae42e54b 2013-06-17T15:46:25+02:00

Marie Gabánková is a noted portrait artist, painter and teacher. She was born in Ostrava and left Czechoslovakia with her family shortly after the Soviet invasion of 1968, aged just seventeen. She has lived in Canada ever since and has had a book of her works published in England, and had such noted figures as singer-songwriter Karel Kryl and writer Josef Škvorecký sit down for portraits. When I met up with her I began by asking Marie what memories she has of her youth in Czechoslovakia.

urn:uuid:a3d0fb79-67d4-576a-99a9-72044e6d7c31 2013-06-10T00:00:00+02:00

Anyone who has been to Prague is extremely likely to have seen some of the work of artist Jiří Votruba. Posters, postcards and t-shirts bearing his distinctive brightly-coloured images of Franz Kafka, the Golem, and Prague landmarks are on sale throughout the city. Indeed, they themselves help form the image of the Czech capital for many visitors.

urn:uuid:2800e0fd-de7d-5e68-8248-c53a6a2bd978 2013-06-03T13:37:29+02:00

Michal Kašpárek is the perfect guide to the Czech Republic’s second city Brno. A life-long resident, he has in recent years used his extensive knowledge of the Moravian capital to write a very useful alternative e-book entitled Poznej Brno (Get to Know Brno), while he is also behind the English language listings site BrnoNow.com. When we met for a drink recently outside a café in the lively Veveří district, I began by asking Kašpárek what was distinctive about Brno people.

urn:uuid:51235fa4-ad7a-5b65-8879-837c17f04393 2013-05-27T13:11:47+02:00

Jeff Vanderziel heads the Department of English and American Studies at Masaryk University in Brno. His association with the university actually goes all the way back to 1989, when he worked there in the dying days of Communism. He took over at the English department a couple of years later – and has seen many changes over the past two decades.

urn:uuid:5e849759-8a95-542b-a53e-1b779319d718 2013-05-20T13:16:08+02:00

Gisela Cheffer was born Gisela Duschinský in Brno in 1932. Her Viennese father was Jewish, which made her a target for the Nazis, and her baptism as a Roman Catholic very likely saved her life. She later came close to being forced to leave during the mass expulsion of Czechoslovakia’s German population after the war. But she stayed – until, that is, a meeting with a Finn led to a life abroad.

urn:uuid:506078e5-063b-5d6b-8e03-28e3a77cabba 2013-05-13T13:13:50+02:00

One of the more colourful news stories out of the Czech Republic last year concerned Corrupt Tour, which started running excursions – in Czech, English and German – to sites linked to graft. These include the villas of dodgy businessmen, Prague City Hall and the spot where the city’s “Olympic centre” was projected to stand.

urn:uuid:a83a93e2-ebfd-54e0-8298-88b782dbaca3 2013-05-06T14:48:20+02:00

How are Czech newspapers dealing with the shift to an online world? Is their present, mainly free model sustainable? And what will the media landscape look like in a decade? One person well placed to discuss these and similar questions is Lucie Tvarůžková. She is the boss of iHNed, the news website of the leading Czech financial daily Hospodářské noviny, whose data journalism team recently won a prestigious award.