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An informal interview show, where you have the chance to meet some of the most interesting figures in Czech life today.
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Lukáš Novotný’s excellent book Modern London offers intricate,
colourful illustrations of and entertaining text about many of the most
iconic structures built over the last century in the UK capital, his
adopted home since 2014. The young Czech, who works as a graphic designer
and paper engineer, is currently preparing a guide to the modernist
architecture of New York.
The Czech government’s willingness to tackle the economic impacts of the
coronavirus crisis is impressive, but it must do far better when it comes
to actually delivering help to hard-hit companies. And the economic
slowdown could even reach double digits if another lockdown is required. So
says Professor Jan Švejnar of Columbia University, who has headed a team
of economists advising the Czech Republic’s Central Crisis Staff, the
national Covid-19 task force.
High above street level, scores of magnificent statues gaze down over the
historical centre of Prague. These rooftop figures – which normally go
virtually unnoticed – are now the focus of a project by Amos Chapple, a
New Zealand-born photographer resident in the Czech capital. In recent
weeks Chapple’s stunning images have been shared hundreds of times on
social media and earned international media attention.
Greta Stocklassa, a half-Czech, half-Swedish student at Prague’s FAMU
film
school, was doing an internship in New York in March when fear of the
Covid-19 epidemic hitting the city spurred her to return to Europe. The
documentary maker chose to go to Sweden, where there has been no lockdown,
instead of the Czech Republic, which was quick to impose comprehensive
restrictions in a bid to halt the spread of coronavirus. In this interview
Stocklassa explains why.
Few if any Czechs are more familiar with China than Tomáš Etzler, who was
Czech TV’s correspondent there from 2006 to 2014. When we spoke, Etzler
told me that right now we only know the tip of the iceberg of China’s
mishandling of the coronavirus. But before turning to what the Covid-19
pandemic will mean for China’s international standing, we discussed the
journalist’s own fascinating life. It has included spells as an immigrant
in the US and reporting from conflict zones for CNN.
The Czech government needs to invest hundreds of billions of crowns to
shore up the economy, with the crucial auto industry particularly
vulnerable. Measures being taken now will alleviate the unemployment that
will inevitably follow the coronavirus crisis. And the weak crown is of no
benefit to exporters if they aren’t producing anything. So says the vice
president of the Czech Confederation of Industry, Radek Špicar, who I
spoke to late last week.
In his new book Slepé skvrny (Blind Spots), sociologist Daniel Prokop
offers illuminating perspectives on various aspects of today’s Czech
Republic. This makes the Charles University academic the perfect person
with whom to discuss issues such as the connections between pay level and
political outlook and between social mobility and education – and how the
coronavirus crisis is likely to affect the country’s worst off. But our
conversation begins with Czech populism.
Miřenka Čechová is an internationally acclaimed performer, director and
choreographer known for combining dance and physical theatre. In her
recently published autobiographical novel Baletky (Ballet Dancers)
Čechová draws on her years as a pre-teen and teenage student at
Prague’s Dance Conservatory, detailing extreme physical demands and
constant psychological pressure. Nevertheless, the 38-year-old says she did
not intend the book – which also paints a vivid portrait of ‘90s Prague
– as a “My Ballet Hell” style misery memoir. When we spoke, I first
asked her about some of the extreme things she had been through as a young
ballet student.
Writer and former dissident Eda Kriseová worked closely with Václav Havel
during his first few years as president. She headed Prague Castle’s
Complaints and Pardons Department, then inundated with letters from Czechs
who felt for the first time in decades that they could appeal to somebody
in authority. Kriseová, who wrote the only authorised biography of Havel,
even gave interviews as a kind of stand-in for the much in-demand democracy
leader.
When Eda Kriseová was barred from journalism after the 1968 Soviet-led
invasion she chose an unlikely escape from the grim reality of that time:
voluntary work at an isolated mental hospital. She also wrote in samizdat,
which led to her gradually becoming part of Czechoslovakia’s
anti-Communist dissent. As we will hear, Kriseová – whose husband is
filmmaker Josef Platz – found novel ways to resist secret police
pressure. But the first part of this two-part interview begins with the
author’s early days.
No fewer than 23,000 fans of sci-fi, fantasy and horror attended the first
ever Prague Comic-Con at the weekend. And the biggest guest at the
inaugural edition was Hollywood actor Ron Perlman, who has appeared in
superhero movies such as Hellboy and Blade II, both of which were shot
right here in Prague, a city he avowedly adores.
Philosopher and one-time dissident Jan Sokol is perhaps best-known among
the Czech public as a failed presidential candidate, having missed out to
Václav Klaus in the final round of voting in 2003, the last time the
country’s head of state was chosen by legislators. Professor Sokol has
known the current, directly elected president since before 1989 – and
offers sharp criticism of Miloš Zeman in this the second half of a
two-part interview. But first we discuss the period when, after the fall of
communism, he was finally allowed to pursue an academic career.
Philosopher Jan Sokol was an MP in the early 1990s, served as Czech
education minister and lost in the final round of voting for president in
2003. Barred from studying under the Communists, Professor Sokol came to
philosophy via his father-in-law Jan Patočka, an early signatory of
Charter 77. In the first part of a two-part interview, he discusses
Patočka’s death, the achievements of Charter 77 – which he also signed
– and the Velvet Revolution. But our conversation began with Jan
Sokol’s family background and his own beginnings.
Czech journalist Jana Ciglerová recently published the book Americký
Deník (American Diary), compiling a series of columns she wrote during a
stay in Florida between late 2016 and last summer. When she came to our
studios, the conversation took in US and Czech attitudes to parenting,
education and friendship, as well as Ciglerová’s experience of reporting
from Trump’s America. But I first asked her what had been the hardest
single thing to get used to in the US.
One of the most compelling and stylish Czech films of 2019 was A Certain
Kind of Silence, the feature debut from Michal Hogenauer. The largely
English-language work depicts a Czech girl who becomes an au pair in an
unnamed Northern European state only to discover her host family are
members of a sinister sect. When we spoke, the conversation took in the
challenges of shooting abroad and the ways in which directors can pander to
festival programmers. But I first asked Hogenauer about the inspiration for
the story in A Certain Kind of Silence.
The Czech Elves are secretive volunteers who have taken it upon themselves
to monitor disinformation that they say emanates from Russia. Their name is
borrowed from similar groups in the Baltic states who also combat trolls,
while their chief activity is publishing regular reports about
disinformation and fake news in the Czech online sphere. I discussed their
work with Bob Kartous, a Czech Elves’ spokesperson and one of the few
members who is not anonymous.
UK journalist Misha Glenny is an expert on organised crime and
cybersecurity and has written a number of books, including the hit title
McMafia. He studied in Prague and did a lot of reporting from the city in
the late 1980s, including during the Velvet Revolution. At present he also
heads a committee guaranteeing the independence of editors and journalists
at the Economia group, which publishes titles such as Hospodářské noviny
and Respekt. Czech Radio’s Lenka Kabrhelová sat down with Misha Glenny
recently and began by asking him about the nature of corruption in this
part of the world.
Prague has obviously changed enormously over the last 30 years. But what
have been the city’s most, and least, impressive construction projects
since the Velvet Revolution? After the Dancing House, why did interest in
audacious projects seem to cool? And how has Wenceslas Square fared? Who
better to answer those questions than architect Jan Kasl, who is president
of the Czech Chamber of Architects and served as mayor of Prague from 1998
to 2002. We chatted recently on Na příkopě St., in the very heart of the
city centre.
Sociologist Jan Hartl set up Czechoslovakia’s first modern-day polling
agency, STEM, in 1990 and has been closely monitoring domestic politics and
society ever since. When we spoke, the conversation took in Czech
politicians’ shifting attitude to opinion surveys, Václav Havel’s
private discussion circle and the “cautious nature” of the country’s
voters. But I first asked Mr. Hartl for his standout memories of the Velvet
Revolution.
Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution was sparked by a student demonstration
on November 17, 1989 that was brutally quelled by riot police. Among those
on the front line of those clashes was writer Magdaléna Platzová. The
daughter of dissident Eda Kriseová, at 17 years old she had already taken
part in a number of demonstrations. But, she says, nothing prepared her for
the violence that surrounded her on Prague’s Národní St. on that now
famous day.
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