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Singer-songwriter Albert Černý is well-known to local guitar pop fans thanks to his former group, Charlie Straight. Indeed, their 2009 UK-inspired debut She’s A Good Swimmer won the Czech equivalent of a Grammy for album of the year. Now the rangy and charismatic frontman is back with a new band, Lake Malawi, who are just about to play their first live shows around the Czech Republic. On the eve of those shows, I spoke to Černý at our studios. Our conversation started with where it all started: his hometown of Třinec, one of the country’s most easterly

For 12 years Peter Freestone was a personal assistant and close friend to Freddie Mercury, the singer who reached superstardom with the rock group Queen. He was with also there during the singer’s last days in 1991. Since the start of the Noughties, Freestone has lived in the Czech Republic. I contacted him this week after it was confirmed that Queen will release three tracks that time forgot which Mercury recorded with Michael Jackson, a recording at which Freestone was present.

A new festival merging electronica music, contemporary theatre and dance with multimedia and visual arts is being held in the Czech capital this and next week. Entitled Spectaculare, the event brings some leading artists of these genres to Prague including Jon Hopkins from the UK and Nils Frahm from Germany. But the event also features several Czech artists and ensembles such as Clarinet Factory and Tantehorse.

Perhaps Brno’s best known street artist, the man known as Timo has just moved indoors for the first time, with a new exhibition at the city’s Off/Format gallery. Timo’s art has been acclaimed as poetic, funny and socially critical; the show, entitled Indoor Adventures, features some of his more subtle pieces, but also offers a sample of his street creations.

A festival of Iranian films held in Prague this week brings over two dozen feature films, shorts and documentaries to audiences in the Czech capital. Entitled Iran: A Different Reflection, the third edition of the festival focuses on contemporary Iranian cinema, featuring films such as The Past by the Oscar-winning director Asghar Farhadi, and A Cube of Sugar, the country’ official candidate for this year’s Academy Awards.

Musician Tomáš Kelar’s career began as drummer with the Welsh band Mountaineers, who rubbed shoulders with some big names when they signed to Mute Records. Now living back home in the Czech Republic, Kelar is a member of the highly regarded electronic group Midi Lidi and also produces the female rappers Čokovoko.

Writer and youth movement activist Jaroslav Foglar left a deep trace in Czech popular culture. Besides more than 25 novels for children, Jaroslav Foglar is also the father of Rychlé šípy, or “Rapid Arrows”, a legendary comics that has earned a following with generations of Czech readers. Persecuted by the Nazis and the communists, the writer also single-handedly founded his own youth organization which, in its heyday, had tens of thousands of members across the country.

American film historians recently came across a fascinating discovery when they found the Czech National Film Archive has the only surviving print of the 1929 US movie, the Mysterious Island. The archive in Prague stores around 500 films from Hollywood’s early days, proof that the global dominance of American cinema goes all the way back to the birth of the film industry.

In early November, the Czech foreign affairs and culture ministries combined efforts with the country’s film industry to make a promotional push in India’s film capital Mumbai. Culture Minister Jiří Balvín together with representatives of the Czech Cinematographic Fund, the Association of Producers, and the Czech Film Commission made a pitch to the Bollywood elite to make better use of Czech film services and spectacular locations. Those have already become a favorite for a number of international productions.

With Museum Night and Church Night having already become a tradition in Prague and some other Czech cities, this weekend the Czech Republic will live through its very first Theater Night. Theater halls and performance groups will offer a whole variety of programming indoors and in the streets on Saturday afternoon. For this week’s Arts, we had a chance to speak to Petra Pavlová, the director of the Arts and Theater Institute in Prague, which is organizing the country-wide event.