Culture | Topic Archive

Karel Hašler, was a famous Czech actor, director, film producer as well as film music composer. But most of all, he was the author of more than 300 songs, many of which are still sung today.

Little over a week before the centenary of the establishment of Czechoslovakia, a freshly released film brings the state’s founder to the big screen. Talks with T.G. Masaryk reconstructs a single conversation between the “father of the nation” and writer Karel Čapek, another symbol of the First Republic era.

The Czech-born, US based rock musician Ivan Král, one of the best-known Czech musicians abroad, celebrated his 70th birthday this year. He is perhaps the only Czech to have left his mark on the history of rock music and his songs have been recorded by such artists as Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, or David Bowie.

The Czech Republic has a long tradition of horse racing and the most celebrated race of all is the Great Pardubice, or Velká pardubická. This is Europe’s most challenging steeplechase and is being run this weekend. There are many stories surrounding the race, but perhaps the most interesting – and certainly one of the least known – is that of the only woman to win the steeplechase. Her name was Lata Brandisová, and she won way back in 1937. Her remarkable story is the subject of a book, currently being written by the British journalist, Richard

In one form or another, the stereotype of the “squatting Slav” has likely made its way to your social media feed over the past few years. Wearing an Adidas tracksuit, smoking cigarettes, and swilling cheap vodka or cheap beer, the loitering Slav meme is—as most memes are—perhaps best left unexplained.

Prague-born novelist, travel writer and journalist/blogger Iva Pekárková has lived abroad for the better part of twenty-five years, having first defected to Austria in 1985 and then settled in New York before eventually putting down roots in London after stints back home in the Czech Republic, and extensive travels in Asia and Africa. In town for the Prague Writer’s Festival, we spoke about the influence of movement on her early work – from hitchhiking under communism and driving taxis ‘on both sides of the road’ – and her latest book, about a

The annual international music festival Strings of Autumn kicks off on Tuesday with a concert at Prague’s Vítkov National Memorial. The event, which was established in 1996 by the late Czech president Václav Havel, opens with the legendary minimalist piece ‘In C’ by Terry Riley.

Luboš Andršt is a Czech blues, jazz and art-rock guitarist. In a career spanning close to half a century he has produced over a dozen solo albums, collaborated with leading music ensembles and played with the likes of Paul Jones, Dan Gillespie Katie Webster and B.B. King.

Self-described “Brechtian punk cabaret” trio Tiger Lillies recorded their upcoming album last week at Prague’s Archa Theatre. Between the two live shows, I spoke with the performers about the recording, a collaborative effort with the Prague-based Berg Orchestra.

Novelist and essayist Mark Slouka, a guest author at the ongoing Prague Writers’ Festival, was born in New York to Czech refugees who never should have married but stayed together for nearly half a century. For a time, their chaotic lives, often distorted to tell a greater truth, provided rich fodder for his fiction. When both were gone – his father dead, his long-estranged mother suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s – he found the courage to search for the true story behind her “descent into madness”. The Czech version of the resulting memoir,