In Focus | All stories

The non-profit organization Rytmus, which focuses its work on education for children with mental and learning disabilities, has completed a year-long project which illustrated in practical terms what would need to be done for all students, no matter their mental, physical or social abilities, to be able to attend regular schools. Currently in the Czech Republic, many Roma children and most students with disabilities are relegated to so-called special schools.

For many lovers of classical music, the Czech Republic is the land of Dvořák and Smetana. Fans of more modern music may know Leoš Janáček or Bohuslav Martinů. It may seem, though, that for the past fifty or so years, creation of and even interest in orchestral music has all but died out in this country.

A new exhibit entitled Go and Don’t Shoot will open on Tuesday evening at the National Gallery’s Veletržní Palác. It presents multi-media works that the contemporary Czech artist Štěpánka Šimlová brought back from her visits in Kayin State in Burma. In this week’s In Focus, Masha Volynsky speaks to Ms. Šimlová about the exhibit, and her experiences in Burma, and later looks more closely at the situation in this war-torn country.

Tereza Porybná took over as director of the Czech Centre in London earlier this month. Her professional and academic experience have been quite varied – for many years she worked on humanitarian and development projects in Ethiopia, ran the biggest documentary film festival in the Czech Republic and had completed a doctorate in visual anthropology, receiving a Fulbright grant to do research in the United States.

The first Czech direct presidential election has divided the nation like never before. In the heated campaign ahead of the election’s second round, leftist Miloš Zeman presented himself as a defender of the underprivileged, exploiting his opponent’s alleged lack of “Czechness” in the process while those who backed the aristocrat foreign minister, Karel Schwarzenberg, believed his victory would move the country away from post-communism. So how important was the social vote? What role did nationalism play in the election? And what impact will it have

Various activities are being prepared for celebrations in the run up to the Chinese New Year. Alongside a traditional dragon boat race on the Vltava River and a performance by Chinese singer Feng-yűn Song, Petra Lorenzová’s Kung Fu School in Prague is putting together the final touches for a performance at Palác Akropolis, a popular club in the city. I went along to one of the training sessions at the school on a Monday night to find out how things were coming together.

The new HBO miniseries Hořící Keř, or Burning Bush, receives a gala premiere at a Prague cinema on Wednesday night and kicks off on TV screens next Sunday. Over 23 years after the fall of communism, it is, remarkably, the first film treatment of one of the most dramatic moments of modern Czech history – the self-immolation of Jan Palach in January 1969.

Over the past two decades, philanthropy has become an important part of Czech society, with many people being increasing generous in giving to charity. Radio Prague looks at how the gloomy economic climate affected Czech philanthropy in the past year, and how the donor culture has developed.

Today, in Prague’s bookstores one can find titles in a number of world languages – English, German, Russian, French, and of course Czech. It is much harder these days, although not impossible, to find books published in Hebrew. But five hundred years ago, a little less than a century after the Gutenberg press was invented, the first Hebrew book in Central Europe, and possibly north of the Alps, was printed right here in Prague.