After Washington, Dublin and Barcelona, Prague too is getting its own Havel’s Place. The piece by Bořek Šípek, featuring two chairs by a table with a linden tree growing through it, symbolises the dialogue that was essential to Václav Havel.

A series of popularising evenings focused on the main paradigms in the creation of cities in the 21st century. Two different fields; two different perspectives on the city. The first event in the series will be devoted to a dialogue between urban planner and architect Roman Koucký and sociologist Ivan Gabal. Journalist, analyst and chairman of the Board of trustees of the Václav Havel Library Jan Macháček will host the evening. The series has been prepared by the Prague Institute of Planning and Development.

Opening of exhibition of works by Zbyněk Benýšek. Introduction by Vratislav Brabenec.

Lecture dedicated to the Czech underground. The Czech Underground series is organised by the Historical Sociology department at Charles University’s Faculty of Humanities and the Václav Havel Library and headed by sociologist Nicolas Maslowski.

Pavel Pecháček, Lída Rakušanová and historian Prokop Tomek will discuss Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, Václav Havel and how the idea arose to move the “seditious transmitter” from Munich to Prague.

Economists don’t just monitor the flow of money. We wish to present important streams of economic thought a long way removed from counting crowns in a wallet. We will also attempt to experiment live with game theory, while also discussing ideas in the space where law, economics and other sciences overlap.

Vít Macháček will introduce the subject and chair the discussion.

In recent years, there has been increasing discussion of Islam and it is a subject that arouses strong emotions. The same goes for the Czech Republic, which has a small Muslim minority. A subject that only recently was marginal has sparked the interest of politicians and activists and prompted an often stormy discourse in which Islam appears as a certain “antithesis” of our (Western, Christian, etc.) civilisation. Arabic studies specialists and experts on Islam Jan Čuřík, Petr Pelikán and Bronislav Ostřanský will discuss Islam and its increasingly media-covered “points of friction”.

Chaired by Jan Fingerland (Czech Radio).

The premiere of a feature-length documentary by Miroslav Janek that offers not just a biography but a personal portrait of an exceptional figure: first lady Olga Havlová. A one-of-a-kind woman, known to the public as the wife of Václav Havel and founder of the Good Will Foundation, the film focuses on her “off duty” life. Produced by the company Film a sociologie, it was made with the support of the Václav Havel Library.

Lecture by Nicolas Maslowski, a sociologist of Polish-French extraction, who has for some time been studying the role of dissent and the cultural underground in society. The lecture considers the power of words from the sociological perspective, from sociologists such as Bourdieu to the thoughts of Václav Havel in The Power of the Powerless.

“We led different lives from the others. We didn’t give a shit about having a career, or studying, military service or work either. That gave us more confidence and directness,” says Robert Brylewski, who has been a member of such groups as Brygada Kryzys, Izrael and Armia. He wrote the book Punk a reggae v Babylonu (Punk and Reggae in Babylon) with journalist Rafał Księżyk and the publishing house Smršť is issuing it on the 25th anniversary of the events that in 1989 turned the fates of Eastern European countries on their heads.

The second in a short series of talks in English with colleagues and friends of Václav Havel. Paul Wilson is a freelance journalist, magazine editor, radio producer and translator of Czech literature. He spent ten years in Czechoslovakia (1967–1977) and he was eventually expelled by the Communist government for his association with the dissident movement. In addition to translating many plays, essays, books, and speeches by Václav Havel, he has published many articles on Havel's work as a dissident and politician. Some of them have been published, In Czech, in his recent book, Bohemian Rhapsodies (Torst). Chaired by writer and journalist David Vaughan.

An international conference on the subject of stage interpretation, translation practice and reception of Václav Havel’s work at home and abroad.

Among the Czech and foreign theatrologists and translators who have accepted the VHL’s invitation to attend are Paul Wilson, Markéta Goetz-Stankiewicz, Gyorgy Varga, Inna Bezrukova, Joachim Bruss, Mircea Dan Duta, Andrzej Slawomir Jagodziński and Monika Zgustová. Their papers will focus on various staging concepts and the critical reactions they received, as well as translatological issues linked to translations of Havel’s plays.

Conference programme

Abstracts

Participants Bios

Gala presentation of the 16th Václav Havel Library Notebooks, this time dedicated to the samizdat series Dispatch Editions, which was established by Václav Havel and his friends. In connection with Příběh Edice Expedice (The Story of Dispatch Editions) the pitfalls of publishing “banned” literature will be discussed by producers of Czech samizdat: Daňa Horáková, Ivan M. Havel, Tomáš Vrba, Jiřina Šiklová, Pavel Bratinka, Joachim Bruss and others.
Gabriela Romanová will present the programme.

May 18 marks the 70th anniversary of the day when Stalin had the entire Crimean Tartar nation put on trains and deported from Crimea, chiefly to Central Asia. We will recall the anniversary with the screening of the film Vyhnání a návrat krymských Tatarů (The Expulsion and Return of the Crimean Tartars) (30 min); it will be followed by a discussion on the past and present of Crimea and Ukraine with the film’s writer, journalist Petruška Šustrová and documentarist Krystyna Krauze (director of Tatarské touhy, Wishes of Tartars).

We will contribute to this year’s celebrations of Hrabal’s birth will a hitherto almost secret chapter – the reading of the master by Hungarians and from the Hungarian perspective.

Experts on Hrabal’s work Peter Kocsis, Tomáš Mazal and translator Robert Svoboda will discuss the earthquake that the publication of Postřižiny (Cutting it Short) set off in the then Hungarian People’s Republic. On the differences between Hungarian and Czech humour, getting to grips with tough translating problems and the distance between the languages and closeness of the cultures.

Leaders of candidate lists to the European Parliament elections.

Two days before the vote, the leaders of the candidate lists will discuss ten years of EU membership and more with Respekt weekly journalist Tomáš Sacher. These candidates accepted the invitation: Pavel Poc (ČSSD), Petr Ježek (ANO), Luděk Niedermayer (TOP O9), Jan Zahradil (ODS), Pavel Svoboda (KDU-ČSL), Ondřej Liška (Zelení), Milena Vicenová (LES).

Ukraine’s 20th century, disputes and tragic milestones.

This debate on a hot topic will be chaired by David Svoboda, an historian and Ukraine expert (Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes) specialised in the contemporary history of Ukraine and the Soviet Union.

Reading from works by a late author who never wrote anything he didn’t wish to, that he didn’t mean or that either he or Czech literature would be embarrassed by. Karel Pecka (1928–1997) is – at best – known as the author of novels and short stories set against the backdrop of Communist labour camps, where he himself spent 10 years of his life. However, his work is far more extensive in both theme and genre.

The third evening in a series of staged readings will be dedicated to “early” Havel, specifically the sketch Motormorphosis, which was created in 1960–1961 for an Ivan Vyskočil review. Its central motif is the transformation of a man into an automobile…

Director: Ondřej Novák

Featuring: Miloslav Mejzlík, Jiří Hájek, Bohdana Pavlíkova, Martin Severýn, Pavel Kryl

The release of political prisoners and freedom of assembly, of the media and for independent movements – these were the main demands of the Several Sentences petition. In the middle of 1989 it was signed by 4,000 citizens. These were not only dissidents and important figures on the then arts scene but above all “ordinary” citizens who had lost patience with the Communist regime. This made their signatures an even greater blow to the collapsing system.

Tomas Venclova, an incendiary poet, literary academic, essayist and translator was thrown out of his native Vilnius in 1977, becoming an exile and later a professor at Yale.

He has received many awards, including the Zbigniew Herbert Award for his life’s work.

Reading by writer Vladimír Just.

The story of Faust represents one of the most important European myths and is becoming more topical by the day (which is good news for the myth but, given the point of the Faust story, bad news for us). For the book Professor Vladimír Just has updated his essays from 1994–2013 looking at how the myth has been reworked by important filmmakers, composers, philosophers, writers and painters, from F. W. Murnau to Berg to Václav Havel.