Contributing to the understanding of the subject will be more than 20 excerpts from the filmed testimonies of those who lived through such events: survivors of the genocide of the Armenians during WWI, the famine in Ukraine, the Holocaust, meaning the genocide of Jews and people labelled Jews during WWII, and the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda. The material offers a unique opportunity to reflect on the manufacture of an enemy, propaganda and other phases common to all genocides, with the last being the denial that genocide has taken place.

The book’s author, Roman Catholic priest Ladislav Heryán, will discuss the Bible and the songs of U2 with its editor, radio editor Petr Vaďura.

However, a view of China from the inside reveals a complicated struggle with the burden of traditions, ancient and recent. Tradition and coming to terms with the past in China will be the subject of a lecture by Professor Olga Lomová from the Faculty of Arts of Charles University. (With projections).

From 18:30 a screening of Dominik Jůn’s film Ivan Medek – A Certain Voice (40 min), followed by a debate.

The evening is taking place in cooperation with the Czechoslovak Documentation Centre.

Prague and Brno is a book squeezed into two texts about two places that many know (or at least think they do). Into two essays, two manifestos. Into two travelogues in which science and poetry thoroughly merge: “It’s summer and autumn, the start of winter, spring again, the whole year I walk around Prague. Hot pavement and asphalt. I’m sitting on the first step of a church, which no Praguer would do, and right by me some colourfully clad female in skirt and hat crows, sits on a step and guzzles water from a plastic bottle, repeatedly drinking then crowing a bit. A crazy, a tourist, or both. So now there are two of us loonies. A third here with us is trodden down Stellaria media, chickweed, here at the heel of the first step of the church in Spálená St.”

Can an underground even exist? Does something connect musicians “forced to the margins” in the normalisation era and in the 21st century? What changes did the advent of the digital age bring? Is contemporary musical resistance further left than its predecessors? What remains as a leitmotiv?

Pavel Klusák has put together and will present an evening midway between a lecture and a party.

The book’s translator Petruška Šustrová will conduct a discussion with the writer and Maria Peisert-Kisielewicz and Andrzej Kisielewicz will participate in it.

Event organised in cooperation with the Polish Institute.