Arts | All stories

The sci-fi action thriller Wanted, starring Angelina Jolie, and shot largely in the Czech Republic, received a nomination for Best Sound Mixing at this year’s Academy Awards. Czech soundman Petr Forejt - a veteran on numerous international projects – was part of the team, and although the film didn’t take the Oscar in the end, even a nomination is considered a major success. This Friday Jan Velinger spoke to Petr Forejt in Radio Prague’s studio, asking what it was like to work on Wanted as well as his first reaction when he learned he was an Oscar

These are fine times for the arts in Prague. The Czech capital is receiving a great deal of attention thanks to the EU presidency, and one of the ways the Prague municipal government is availing itself of the opportunity is by taking various art projects under its wing. Indeed, there are so many things vying for notice, from comic book exhibits to Andy Warhol’s motion pictures, that one tends to lose track of them all. The project we're looking at today however is bringing something slightly different to Prague’s gothic squares and murky alleys:

Jan Novák left Kolín in Communist Czechoslovakia a teenager in 1969. He emigrated with his parents to Chicago, where he studied and started to chronicle Czech life in the Windy City. In more recent years he has written screenplays for Miloš Forman, and a prize-winning fictional biography of fellow Czech-Americans, Josef and Ctirad Mašín. He is settled back in Prague for the medium-term teaching at the city’s film school, FAMU. When I met him in a café by the banks of the Vltava recently, I started by asking him about his first spell in this country,

As well as his famous paintings of pop culture icons, the US artist Andy Warhol also made scores of films, often single, unedited shots of his favourite people, or even somebody sleeping for five hours. Now a number of those films are on show in an exhibition entitled Andy Warhol Motion Pictures at Prague’s Rudolfinum.

The commotion in recent weeks over David Černý’s Entropa exhibit in Brussels has made the sculpture one of the hallmarks of the Czech EU presidency. While its opponents deem its stereotypical depiction of the 27 member states a thing of antagonism, something between mockery and insult, its proponents have defended the work as a defining example of Czech humour and have asked what European representation means at all, if national humour is censurable. This week in Arts we’ll be taking a look at the wider context of Černý’s work, what could be called

This week’s Arts focuses on two photographers from rather different backgrounds who both have exhibitions right now at Prague’s Langhans Gallery. Pavel Dias, a Czech documentary photographer, has a show called “Padesát” (Fifty), featuring work spanning half a century. Bill Jacobson, meanwhile, is an American artist showing new work under the title “funny, cry, happy” alongside early pictures never shown publicly before.

This edition of the Arts is devoted to Yvonne Sanchez, a jazz singer of Polish and Cuban origin, whose grandfather even performed with the famous Buena Vista band. Yvonne was brought up in Germany, but settled in Prague in the early 1990s, soon becoming one of the leading singers on the Czech jazz scene. In 2002 she recorded her first album, ‘Invitation’, with a trio of Czech musicians and a few months ago, she released her very own album, called ‘My Garden’.

Václav Havelka is a man of many talents. He promotes rock concerts, presents a radio programme and runs a small music label. But first and foremost he is a musician; solo under the name Selfbrush and with the band Please the Trees, Havelka has steadily become one of the most respected artists in Czech independent music.

One of the most exciting bands to emerge on the Czech music scene over the last 12 months is the funky and progressive pop group known as Toxique. Headed by singer Klara Vytisková (who some have described as a Czech Gwen Stefani) the band released its debut last year – and soon shot up in the charts. The single Two Sides is now widely well-known, while an appearance in last year’s Eurosong (the national round of the Eurovision contest) only added to Toxique’s popularity. The band is the focus of today’s Arts.

The opera Věc Makropulos by Czech composer Leoš Janáček, premiered at Prague’s National Theatre on Thursday in a co-production with the English National Opera. In this edition of the Arts, we take a closer look at the opera, known as The Makropulos Case in English, and at its production in Prague.