Culture | Topic Archive

Ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, an eclectic group of musicians based in the United States has recorded a special album of songs written by Czech songwriters Karel Kryl and Jaromír Nohavica. Called ‘Steel Strings and Iron Curtains – Songs that Ignited the Downfall of Communism’, it features a number of subversive tunes never before recorded in English.

This week marks 60 years since the foundation of the legendary Semafor theatre in Prague, established by the song-writing duo Jiří Suchý and Jiří Šlitr. The theatre, which saw its heyday in the 1960s, produced some of the biggest Czech pop hits ever and helped to launch the careers of many Czech singers and actors, including Waldemar Matuška, Eva Pilarová and Karel Gott.

Hana Hegerová, who is sometimes nicknamed the Czechoslovakia’s Edith Piaf, celebrated her 88th birthday this month. Known for her ability to dramatically interpret lyrics, the Bratislava born singer and actress dominated the Czechoslovak chanson scene for many decades and received critical acclaim from abroad.

The 23rd edition of the annual Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival gets underway on Thursday evening. Over the course of the next five days, the festival will showcase a total of 277 films, including a section dedicated to the anniversary of the Velvet Revolution. I spoke to Marek Hovorka, the festival’s director, and asked to tell me more about the opening film, a tribute to the great Czech cinematographer Jaroslav Kučera:

Ondřej Sekora is perhaps best-known as the author of the beloved cartoon character Ferda Mravenec or Ferdy the Ant. But Sekora was more than just an illustrator and comics author. He was also a journalist, an amateur entomologist, and one of the first propagators of rugby in Czechoslovakia. The Moravian Museum in Brno will mark 120 years since Ondřej Sekora’s birth with an exhibition and a new monography.

Czechoslovakia’s new-found freedom was underlined in August 1990 by a concert at Prague’s Strahov Stadium by the Rolling Stones, who became the first major Western band to perform in the country. In a now famous video message broadcast before the gig, Mick Jagger told fans – in Czech – “the Stones are rolling to Prague”. The man who taught the rock star the phrase was Jan Rubeš. A Czechoslovak TV employee in those years, he later brought shows such as Dallas and The Simpsons to the country’s TV screens. When I spoke to Rubeš, who now works in film

The Dvořák Prague Festival held in September offered opera buffs a special treat: a performance of the generally unknown opera King and Collier, from Dvořák’s early period which was never performed during the composer’s lifetime. Its first and last production took place in 1929 at the National Theatre. And because the opera was never recorded, its 2019 premiere in the form of a concert performance afforded the unique opportunity of hearing music by Dvořák that was entirely new to listeners.

In a book just out, the renowned Czech author and illustrator Renáta Fučíková tells the story of Czechs in North America. The idea to chronicle stories of Czech immigrants originated in Chicago, which is sometimes referred to as “the most Czech city” in the US. I met up with Renáta Fučíková at her studio in the Old Town district of Prague, where she was putting finishing touches on the final illustrations for her new book.

Celebrations marking the 30th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution are taking place not only in the Czech Republic but also among Czech and Slovak communities abroad. The Czech consulate in Chicago has prepared several events highlighting the 30 years of freedom, including a showcase of photos by the award-winning photographer Karel Cudlín.

The National Library of Israel has started digitising a long-lost batch of archival materials, belonging to Franz Kafka’s friend Max Brod. They include, among other things, Kafka’s personal diary and a notebook in which he practiced Hebrew. Israel received the missing documents from a Swiss bank in August after years of international searches and legal disputes over the author’s legacy.