Panorama | All stories

In his basement studio in the Šelmberkovský Palace in Prague’s Malá Strana, Oldřich Škácha is visibly amused as he points out a shot he took in 1991. It features then finance minister Václav Klaus, grinning broadly, flanked by two bunny girls at a Playboy ball. Škácha says he likes to exhibit the picture today as a little jab at the president.

This Wednesday saw the premiere of the highly-anticipated Czech crime thriller Kajínek, partly based on events surrounding one of the Czech Republic’s most notorious convicts. Found guilty of two contract killings in the ‘90s, Jiří Kajínek would probably have remained forgotten behind bars had it not been for a daring escape from the country’s toughest prison he has also always maintained he was innocent.

The Research Institute of Fish Culture and Hydrobiology in Vodňany, South Bohemia (a centre with a long and respected history and part of the University of South Bohemia’s Faculty of Fisheries and Protection of Waters) will soon get a major make-over to the tune of 370 million crowns. Roughly two-thirds – allowing the centre to renovate two buildings and complete a new one – will come from European funds. Once reconstruction is completed, the institute will be able to focus vigorously on a series of important new research projects – including rearing

Ivo Laurin is the director of Outbreak, the Czech Republic’s only word-of-mouth marketing agency. Instead of what’s called above-the-line or ATL advertising, meaning traditional methods such as billboards and TV commercials, Mr Laurin aims to engage the consumer in conversations about the product that is at the center of his campaign. And with some success. Word-of-mouth is sometimes referred to as WoM, and last year Outbreak received a bronze Wommy, an American award honoring great work in this cutting-edge form of advertising. Ivo Laurin talks

Prague last week hosted the 16th International Oral History Conference. And among the dozens of seminars, workshops and presentations, there was one about an ongoing project to interview cinemagoers and movie house workers in the country’s second city, Brno. The idea is to produce a picture of the cinema experience in the city over four decades. In this week’s Panorama, we look at some of the results so far.

Five years ago the first “baby box” - a place where mothers can give up their unwanted babies anonymously for adoption, was opened in the Czech Republic. The event was preceded by a heated debate and it took some time before the advocates of baby boxes convinced the health ministry to give the project the green light.

A report on human trafficking released last week by the US State Department called on the Czech Republic to do more to increase the number of convicted trafficking offenders serving time in prison. It also praised Prague’s efforts to protect and assist victims. But the Czech branch of the NGO La Strada, which works in this field, questions aspects of Washington’s annual Trafficking in Persons report. La Strada’s director Irena Konečná says, for instance that it makes the mistake of conflating trafficking and pimping.

How did communist propaganda brainwash people? What were the most frequent words used in the communist press? And was it at all possible to learn any real news from the censored newspapers? These are some of the questions a team of Czech linguists is trying to answer in their Dictionary of Communist Totalitarianism.

Prague’s National Agriculture Museum in Prague held a special day this week to highlight a culinary phenomenon enjoyed not only by Czechs but also by their neighbours, a day honouring the dumpling. The day, open to schools and members of the public, accompanied an on-going German-Czech exhibition entitled Knedlíkové nebe (Dumpling Heaven) – a three-year project looking at the history of the food as a shared culinary heritage.

Amid a lot of confusion about what was taking place, Czech law on the possession and growing of drugs changed at the start of the year. The change was more of a far reaching clarification than a fundamental overhaul. Just over 100 days into the new drugs regime, this edition of Panorama tries to gauge what the new law meant for the most popular Czech drug, cannabis or marihuana, and what has been the effect.