Arts | All stories

Famufest, which was held in Prague last week, is the annual showcase of films made by students of the Film and TV School of Prague's Academy of Performing Arts, or FAMU as it's known. In the Arts this week, Radio Prague looks at the highlights of this year's festival and assesses the contuining importance of this school to Czech cinema.

The American writer Robert Fulghum, the author of such bestsellers as "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" and "It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It" enjoys huge popularity among Czech readers and his books always rank very high on the list of bestsellers in this country. Robert Fulghum is now in the Czech Republic, promoting the Czech translation of the second part of his novel "Third Wish" - which is described by the Czech editor as a "pentalogy in three volumes".

In the Arts this week we visit two concerts and look at two rather different musical projects. The first one is an international guitar festival Guitar Across Styles. The second is a musical group, the Czech Chamber Ensemble which has a passion for Czech baroque music.

In the Arts this week, we look at the Music on Film - Film on Music festival or MOFFOM as it's known, which is now in its second year. This event is an innovative celebration of the special relationship between music and film.

100 Czech Design Icons is the title of a remarkable exhibition which has just got underway in Prague. It features an extremely broad range of Czech design classics, from a Cubist clock made by Josef Gocar in 1912 to colourful 1970s inflatable animals.

In this week's Arts, we look at two slightly offbeat classical music festivals: the wonderfully eclectic Strings of Autumn event, which is celebrating its tenth aniversary, and Prague's International Chamber Music Festival, which promotes an often-neglected side of classical music.

"Bata-ville: We are not afraid of the future", a road movie exploring the legacy of the legendary Czech entrepreneur Tomas Bata, was a big hit at the Edinburgh International Film Festival last month. The film charts a bus journey made by former workers of two defunct Bata factories in the British towns of East Tilbury and Maryport to the Moravian city of Zlin, where the vast Bata shoe-making empire was first founded in 1894

A Czech organisation called "Change" has just finished its first ever campaign in Prague's metro aiming to raise public awareness of the mentally ill. Mental illness is not a marginal, minority issue. According to statistics about twenty percent of Czechs suffer depression but only four percent ever get treated.

Emperor Charles IV's coronation procession was one of the events marking the launch of the European Heritage Days in Prague last weekend. It is the first time that a post-communist country has been chosen to kick off the Europe-wide event.

The 2005 World Expo in the Japanese prefecture of Aichi is slowly drawing to a close. As part of the huge international show, visitors have been able to enjoy the Czech contribution entitled "The Garden of Fantasy and Music".