Culture | Topic Archive

Prague’s biggest movie event, Febiofest, kicks off on Thursday. Now in its 26th year, the festival gives many movies set for local cinema distribution their first screenings but also showcases scores of works that film buffs would otherwise have trouble tracking down. Ahead of Febiofest’s curtain-raiser, I asked its co-programme director Anna Kopecká what this year’s highlights were likely to be.

Japanese professor of architecture Yoshio Sakurai has over the past twelve years visited every building ever realised by Adolf Loos, the Brno-born pioneer of European Modern architecture in the early 20th century. A sketchbook and camera in hand, Prof. Sakurai was on a mission that has now been fulfilled: to create exact scale models of Loos’s best works.

John Lennon’s wall in Prague, which features a wide array of thematic street art, is a popular destination for tourists and a symbolic site of Czech opposition to the communist regime. Now its surface features a whole array of new pieces. Thanks to a special event organised on the occasion of the 30 Years of Freedom, 20 artists from a multitude of countries added their artwork carrying messages of peace.

The Leipzig Book Fair, one of the most important literary events in the world, gets underway in the East German city this week with the Czech Republic as the main guest of honour. The Czech program will be part of the Czech Year of Culture launched in the city in October last year, celebrating the country’s literature, film, photography, music and design.

Věra Bílá died of a heart attack this week, days before her scheduled comeback tour. The Roma singer, who was widely regarded as a great talent and once sang to sold out audiences across the world, spent the last years of her life heavily in debt and living in a lodging house. Since her death, many have said that her songs will forever live on as exceptional examples of the world music genre.

The legendary pianist Alfred Brendel will come to Prague this weekend to take part in a three-day festival organised in his honour. The Czech-born musician, considered to be one of the world’s greatest living pianists, will present his books, give a master class and lecture on the art of playing Mozart. The event gets underway at Prague’s Rudolfinum concert hall on Sunday.

It was supposed to be the week when she started her comeback tour. Instead, it ended with her death on a hospital bed. Věra Bílá, who died on Tuesday, was just 64-years-old. But those who knew her say her songs will remain an important contribution to the genre of world music forever.

New York-based Alex Zucker is one of the most highly-regarded translators of Czech literature into English and works regularly with leading writers such as Jáchym Topol and Petra Hůlová. When we spoke on a park bench in Manhattan in late September, the conversation took in Zucker’s time in Prague in the early 1990s, his long relationships with authors and his criteria for choosing projects. But first he told me how he had started translating Czech literature – via an interest in human rights.

Today’s Sunday Music Show is dedicated to winners of the Czech music industry's annual Anděl awards. Among them are The Atavists, named Discovery of the Year and winners of the Rock Album of the Year, for Lo-Fi Life, their second LP. Also in the programme are rock giants Lucie, whose disc EvoLucie was awarded Album of the Year; funk stalwarts Monkey Business (Band of the Year); Ty Nikdy (Best Rap Album) Barbora Poláková (female Singer of the Year) and Miro Žbirka (male Singer of the Year).

Behind the scenes, a ‘subsidy war’ is raging in Central Europe among national film commissions, which have been steadily sweetening rebates and incentives to attract lucrative Hollywood and other foreign productions. Czech Film Commissioner Pavlína Žipková says 2018 was a record year in spending and shooting days, with foreign productions – especially TV series – drawn in by top-notch crews, services and “eleven centuries of architecture” for locations.