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A new documentary film entitled Life According to Václav Havel is to premiere in Czech cinemas on November 20, a spokeswoman for the project said. The film, directed by Andrea Sedláčková, is co-produced by Czech Television and the Franco-German TV channel ARTE. The movie aims to present the Czech playwright and dissident turned president as an “intellectual rebel and a ladies’ man", the filmmakers said. It also focuses on Havel’s childhood, military service and the beginning of his theatre career.

The Václav Havel Library is on Wednesday holding the conference Human Rights 25 Years After, in connection with the awarding this week of the second Václav Havel Human Rights Prize. The library, which was founded a decade ago, recently moved to new, bigger premises on Prague’s Ostrovní St. I discussed the reasons for the move – and its programme of public events – with its programme coordinator Veronika Brázdilová.

In a special programme to mark Czech Statehood Day, I am joined in the studio by Ondřej Matějka, who is the Deputy Director of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. He has agreed to help me explore some issues related to heraldry, meaning national symbols and the iconography of the Czech people.

A bust of the late Czech president Václav Havel is due to be unveiled in the U.S. Capitol’s Freedom Foyer on November 19, the ctk news agency reports citing the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives John Boehner. The unveiling ceremony has been scheduled to take place on the 25th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution. In 1990, the late Czech president delivered one of his most famous speeches before the U.S. Congress. The bust of the legendary Czech dissident-playwright-turned-president will reside in Freedom Foyer those of alongside those of Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.

Several cities in the Czech Republic and abroad including Brussels, Oxford, Plzeň and Hradec Králové are looking to unveil Havel’s Place memorials dedicated to the late Czech president Václav Havel, the news website lidovky.cz reported on Sunday. The memorial sculpture in the form of two chairs and a table around a linden tree was first unveiled in Washington in 2013, followed by Dublin, Barcelona and Prague. Installations of the monument are overseen by Prague’s Václav Havel Library.

Vandals damaged an unconventional memorial dedicated to the late Václav Havel located on campus at the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice. Unknown perpetrators broke three of four glass decorative items on two chairs at the Václav Havel "bench", a small area designed to invite discussion. The decorative elements, like the chairs in Prague’s version, were designed by architect and friend to Mr Havel, Bořek Šípek. Police are checking data from a surveillance system to try and gain information. Besides České Budějovice and Prague, three more such memorials are located in Washington D.C., Dublin and Barcelona.

Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka will visit the United States in November where he will attend the unveiling of a bust of the late president Vaclav Havel in the U.S. Congress, the ctk news agency reports. The unveiling ceremony has been scheduled to take place on the 25th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution. In 1990, the late Czech president delivered one of his most famous speeches before the U.S. Congress.

Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka has rejected the notion that under his leadership the Czech Republic has gradually been abandoning the late president Vaclav Havel’s legacy with respect to democratic principles and human rights observance in the world. In an interview for the ctk news agency Mr. Sobotka said that since taking office in January of 2014 his cabinet had considerably improved the country’s image abroad and was more successful than its predecessors in promoting Czech interests in the European Union. The coalition government has come under fire for fueling business ties with China at the cost of downgrading its support for Tibet. Mr. Sobotka said the Czech Republic was not ignoring human rights issues, merely strengthening economic diplomacy.

A huge poster of Václav Havel and the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama created to protest against the current government’s more conciliatory approach to China has been hung on the facade of the apartment building where the late Czech president lived on Prague’s Rašínovo nábřeží and where his brother Ivan M. Havel still resides. The poster had been hung by former Greens leader and current LES chairman Martin Bursík on his building by the Czech lower house after Foreign Minister Lubomír Zaorálek signed a declaration in China saying that Tibet was an integral part of the country. Václav Havel supported human rights in China and was friends with the Dalai Lama.

Sam Walters is one of Britain’s most acclaimed theatrical directors and during his four decades as artistic director of The Orange Tree Theatre in south-west London, the theatre has enjoyed an unrivalled reputation. In today’s Czech Books, he talks to David Vaughan about his very special relationship to the work of Václav Havel.