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Marking five decades since the death of the great Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů in 1959, a major international project entitled Martinů Revisited was officially launched on Thursday night with a concert at Prague’s Rudolfinum. It features scores of events, both in the Czech Republic and further afield, and will run for exactly two years, until December 12, 2010.

Česká RAPublika is a new documentary following the lives of some of the best-known names in Czech rap. Over the last three years, director Pavel Abrahám has followed the movements of artists Hugo Toxx, Orion and James Cole, creating a portrait of the three rappers, and the Czech rap scene, as an end result. The film has been praised for its humour, which is not at the expense of its central characters. Director Pavel Abrahám says that following these rappers’ lives was in itself extremely enjoyable:

The rock band Tindersticks are currently promoting their latest album The Hungry Saw on a European tour that takes them to Prague’s Archa theatre next Wednesday. For the group’s David Boulter the Prague show will be something of a homecoming, as the English-born piano-player and keyboardist has been living here in the Czech capital for the last decade.

The Story of Prague Castle is a permanent exhibition at Prague’s most famous site, covering its magnificent thousand-year history – from its architecture to the lives of the Czech kings. But, this week, a new small exhibit was added, one that will be of most interest to those passionate about jewelry. Around 30 items in gold and silver, dating back to the 9th and 10th centuries, in other words the early medieval period, have been put on display.

Young Czech designer Jan Čtvrtník has worked for some of the best-known names in the industry, from domestic firm Moser to IKEA and Electrolux. He has just won an illustrious Droog award for a vase highlighting the issue of climate change, which also attracted the attention of British design guru Marcus Fairs. He has studied in Sweden and spent part of his schooling at NASA HQ in Houston, Texas. He now lives and works in Italy. During a brief trip back to the Czech Republic, I caught up with Jan Čtvrtník in a bustling Prague café. As someone who

Art historian Anna Fárová has, for over 60 years, worked tirelessly to catalogue and promote the great Czech photographers as we know them today. She was responsible for building up the Museum of Decorative Arts’ first photography collection, before being dismissed for signing Charter 77. She catalogued the complete works of František Drtikol, inherited the estate of photographer Josef Sudek, and worked closely with an exiled Josef Koudelka throughout her career. The art historian also struck up friendships with Arthur Miller and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

In the twelve years since it was established, the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival has quickly become the biggest showcase of creative documentary films in the Central European region. Over 30,000 people attended 240 film screenings at this year’s event, which attracted high-calibre guests such as the American pioneer of “fly-on-the-wall” documentary Frederick Wiseman and the controversial Austrian filmmaker Ulrich Seidl.

The old industrial district of Holešovice in Prague 7 has undergone something of a revival in recent years, a change perhaps best exemplified by the opening last weekend of an ambitious new art gallery on the site of a late 19th century factory in the area. At 3000 square metres, Dox is far and away the biggest privately-owned gallery in the Czech Republic.

The minimalist composer and conductor Petr Kotík has led the S.E.M Ensemble since soon after he arrived in the United States at the very end of the 1960s. In this, the second of two editions of the Arts dedicated to the Prague-born musician, he explains why he considers his hometown a musical “garbage heap” and lauds Ostrava, the city where he established an institute and festival dedicated to new music.

Petr Kotík is a Prague-born composer and conductor based in New York. He is the founder and artistic director of the S.E.M. Ensemble, a group that performs modern classical music, both by Kotík himself and others including John Cage and La Monte Young. In 1999 he established the Ostrava Centre for New Music, which runs the biennial Ostrava Days institute and festival in the north Moravian city.