Arts | All stories

The Czech writer and journalist Libuse Konradova has just written a book about the life of Jaroslav Novak, a navigator of the British Royal Air Force during the World War II. In the book Novak recalls his childhood, the beginning of the war and his joining the Czechoslovak Air Force, as well as his dramatic escape from the country, at the beginning of the Nazi occupation. In the major part of the book Libuse Konradova explains Novak's operations as an RAF pilot including the Battle of Britain. In the end she describes the disillusionment the pilot

Prague is well known as a city full of theatres, concert halls, music clubs and galleries. All year round there are festivals in all fields of the arts. But is it sufficient? Does the city also give young artists enough space to develop their talent? And how about the contemporary art work that decorates some Prague streets and squares; does it deserve such prominent exposure? These and many other questions were brought up at a public debate this week.

The Czech Centre for Oral History has recently finished collection over one hundred and twenty in-depth interviews with former communists and dissidents. The project is the first of its kind in Central and Eastern Europe and will likely serve as a precedent for other former communist countries. Fifty of the interviews will be published for the general public early next year, while the rest of the material will be made available to academics for further analysis. We spoke to the centre's director, Miroslav Vanek.

In today's Arts I will take you beyond the borders of the Czech Republic. We visit a film festival in the eastern German city of Cottbus. There are dozens or even hundreds of different film festivals around Europe, but the Cottbus one is special; it is the biggest display of films produced in countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

Leos Janacek's "Moravian Folk Poetry In Songs" performed by Iva Bittova and the Skampa Quartet opened the Prague part of an international music project called "Czech Dreams" - a festival which is a chain of more than a hundred concerts performed in many small towns around Europe. The concerts are to promote Czech culture and music abroad but at the same time they aim to deepen links between different places in Europe.

The Rudolfinum Gallery, one of the major Prague art halls, has prepared a remarkable exhibition of modern Czech art featuring the work of one of the country's most original visual artists: Frantisek Skala. His small, discarded objects discovered in garbage dumps and transformed into new artefacts create an interesting contradiction to the monumental space of the historic building itself.

One could be forgiven for thinking that most Czechs would like to forget the "wholesome" socialist fare that their national TV station dished out during the communist era. But last year, to mark its fiftieth anniversary, Czech Television ran a marathon twenty-four hour programme, which allowed viewers to phone in and select their favourite old clips from the past. Surprisingly, it turned out to be a huge success.

Film festivals often bring to mind shiny limousines with film stars at Cannes or fancy banquets in Venice. In the Czech Republic the most famous festival is held every year in Karlovy Vary, a quiet spa town that comes to life almost overnight. But there are other festivals which perhaps don't get as much attention but should, focusing on issues like tourism or the environment. Over the last couple of weeks the Czech Republic was full of events of this kind.

The creators of Up and Down are no to strangers to the film industry, in fact they are very well known: the duo of director Jan Hrebejk & screenwriter Petr Jarchovsky already have a good number of films behind them. Internationally the most successful was probably - a tragicomic story about a family hiding a Jewish man in their flat in Nazi-occupied Bohemia.

Every Czech knows the tune. "Ta nase pisnicka ceska" or "That Czech Song of Ours" was voted one of the ten greatest hits of the 20th century in a poll conducted by Czech Radio in 2000.