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The seventh annual Prague Pride Festival of LGBT culture has not only attracted members of the LGBT community from around the world but highlighted the conditions in which they live in different countries. Boris Dittrich is Advocacy Director of the LGBT Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. This week he came to Radio Prague’s studio to talk about the roots of homophobia, the problems the LGBT community faces in different countries and what can be done to improve their lives. I began by asking him where LGBT communities face the biggest

Barrel organ players from around Europe descended on Prague this week for their annual gathering in celebration of the historical instrument and street music. The event called “The Barrel Organ Lives!” brought a unique atmosphere to Prague’s Lesser Town which provided a perfect backdrop for the open-air public concerts that took place here.

The city of Brno is one of a number of venues where summer schools of Czech take place every year and bring together students from across the world. Now in its fiftieth year, the Masaryk University Summer School of Slavonic Studies offers its students much more than just language lessons.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Prague attracted numerous international or Hollywood productions, from the ambitious TV series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles to the first Mission Impossible. There was Hellboy, directed by Guillermo del Toro, and Casino Royale, the first outing by Daniel Craig as the new James Bond, shot partly in Prague and in Karlovy Vary. However, things began to go south and the boom turned into a whimper.

Vendulka Holá has had nothing less than a remarkable career, working 38 years for the Czech Customs Administration. Today, the deputy head of the office, she is fluent in more than six languages and was the recipient this year of the Legion of Honour, France’s highest order of merit.

With time everyone gathers some baggage. And with the Czech Republic’s main film studios, Prague’s Barrandov, having a history going back almost 100 years, there’s quite a collection of costumes, furniture, wigs, firearms, and even carriages that has been accumulated over the years.

Prague’s Barrandov Studios have been the centre of the local film industry for over eight decades and in recent years have hosted shooting on major Hollywood hits like Mission Impossible and Casino Royale. In this report we speak to the head of Barrandov’s set construction unit, a team that has been a key element in the studios’ success.

It is now twenty-five years since the founding of the Czech charity People in Need, or Člověk v tísni, which operates in several dozen countries around the world providing humanitarian relief, supporting development projects, and educational and human rights programs. In a special program marking the anniversary I am joined in the studio by Jan Mrkvička, who is the head of the NGO’s development and humanitarian relief section.

Hello and welcome to Radio Prague with me, Ruth Fraňková. July 5 is a public holiday in the Czech Republic and on the occasion we are bringing you a special programme, featuring in-depth interviews with two of the recipients of this year’s Gratias Agit awards for promoting the good name of the Czech Republic abroad.

U dvou Koček, At the two Cats, is bang in the middle of Prague’s Old Town not far from Wenceslas Square. That’s been a boon in some senses but also a problem as the traditional brewery and restaurant try to juggle keeping locals and thirsty and hungry tourists with many Czechs moving out of the centre and into the suburbs. Manager Roman Pohanka explained some of the history of the that has been put together of the pub although many gaps in the chronology still remain.