Prague Talk

No foreigner can have had such an impact on Prague in the modern era as Serge Borenstein. Indeed in three and a half decades, the Belgian-born developer has been behind new constructions totalling a remarkable half a million square metres in and around the capital. His most notable projects have been in Karlín, a district he has almost single-handedly transformed with a series of gleaming office buildings. And it was at Borenstein's offices there that we spoke recently.

Matt Welch was among the first wave of young Westerners who flooded into Prague in the early 1990s. Today a prominent journalist and commentator in his native US, back then he was one of the founders of Prognosis, Czechoslovakia's first English-language newspaper. And Welch shared lots of colourful recollections of that formative period of his life from his study in New York.

Dr. Tomáš Páleníček is a leading Czech proponent of the use of psychedelics in certain kinds of psychiatric treatment. The psychiatrist and several colleagues recently appeared in a documentary named Doctor on a Trip that followed them to the Amazon rainforest, where they mapped brain activity during ceremonies centred on ayahuasca, a traditional hallucinogenic drink. I spoke to Páleníček at our Prague studios.

Jiří Pehe is one of Czechia's best-known political scientists, regularly sharing his insights with domestic and international media. But his own story is also noteworthy. After a dramatic 1981 escape to the West, he made a new life in the US. Following the fall of communism he returned to his native country and became a close advisor to President Václav Havel. Pehe then became director of New York University Prague, a position he is about to retire from after more than a quarter of a century.

Among the many warm tributes to Jiří Bartoška, who passed away last week at 78, has been one published by Variety from journalist Steven Gaydos. The Czech actor took the reins at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 1994 and that was also the first edition for Gaydos, who subsequently watched Bartoška and his team turn a moribund event into the vibrant, internationally renowned celebration of cinema it is today.

Writer and artist Martina Skála grew up in Prague's picturesque Malá Strana district before leaving for France in the mid-1980s and eventually settling in California. Skála, who studied history and set design, has also had an unusually broad range of jobs, from acting as an advisor to the female leads on The Unbearable Lightness of Being to literally dancing with horses.

Antonín Kokeš is the man behind Antonínovo pekařství, a successful chain of bakeries. The Moravian-born entrepreneur is also the owner of Albi, a company best-known for the board games that can be found in many Czech homes. We discussed both those businesses and much more at Kokeš's latest venture, a new branch of Antonín's Bakery due to open on May 1 in a grand building on Prague's Náměstí Míru.

Helena Lukas, daughter of the major Czech photographer Jan Lukas, escaped to the West with her family in the mid-1960s. In New York the Lukases were part of a Czech cultural elite in exile that included such names as Jiří Voskovec, Ferdinand Peroutka and Alexander Hackenschmied. Helena Lukas is currently in Czechia preparing an exhibition of her father's work that will open in the town of Dobrovice next weekend.

Perhaps the only time Czech rock bands have made a significant splash internationally was in the early 1990s, when groups like the Ecstasy of St. Theresa were covered in the UK music press. EOST, who made the independent charts in England, were the vanguard of a local iteration of the shoegaze genre then in vogue in London. And that scene is the subject of the new book Šeptej nahlas: Český shoegaze mezi Východem a Západem (Whisper Aloud: Czech Shoegaze Between the East and the West) by music journalist and academic Miloš Hroch. I spoke to the author at our Prague studios.

Jeffrey Martin, a pioneer in the field of 360-degree photography, has been living in Prague for a quarter of a century. Recently his company Mosaic launched a 15-terapixel open-source data set of high resolution street view imagery of the city. How is this incredibly detailed mapping carried out? And who are the many users already accessing the resource, which is free for non-commercial use? I spoke to Martin, who is from the US, in a small park near his office in the Smíchov district.

Director Martin Dušek's latest documentary looks at the issue of taste, primarily when it comes to how Czechs handle home construction/renovation and the urban landscape. A DIY approach is deeply ingrained and many refuse to hire architects, regarding their services – says a speaker in the film – as something “extra”. I caught up with Dušek shortly after producer Czech Television broadcast the film, which is called Journey to Disfantasy.

US-born Guy Roberts founded and heads the Prague Shakespeare Company. He can also currently be seen on TV screens around the world acting in the fantasy series The Wheel of Time, whose third season has just kicked off. Our conversation also takes in Roberts' Czech roots, expertise as a fight coordinator, involvement in a big-budget Jan Žižka biopic and lots more.

Venezuelan-born Jerina Sykora was named after her Czech grandmother Jiřina, who fled to the South American state in the wake of the 1948 Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia. Jerina herself fled in the other direction; among millions of people who have quit Venezuela due to its political turmoil, she and her family have resettled in Czechia under a government repatriation scheme. Their gripping story is the focus of Volver a Volver, a documentary that will get its premiere at the One World festival in Prague next week.

Ondřej Pilný is a professor of English and American literatures at Prague's Charles University, where he also heads the Centre for Irish Studies. As he explains in our interview, his career path was greatly shaped by a series of coincidences that led him to Dublin in his student days. Pilný also discusses literary links between Czechia and Ireland – and says low pay prevents him and his colleagues from doing valuable work in their field.

UK businessman Guy Barker is behind a project set to bring a new terrace to the roof of Prague's 19th century Rudolfinum. His Arcona Capital, a real estate investment company active in a number of EU countries, is a sponsor of the Czech Philharmonic, which calls the magnificent building home. When we met at Arcona Capital's offices, Mr. Barker also discussed a notable development it is involved with in Kyiv – and what led him to move to Prague.

Many European leaders have been aghast at American moves to unilaterally agree a Ukraine “peace deal” with Russia and their concerns have only been intensified by an explosive speech by the US vice-president that some say signals a sundering of the transatlantic alliance. What does the Trump administration's approach mean for Czech defence policy? And how likely is conscription to return? I discussed those questions, and more, with Jan Kofroň of the Institute of Political Studies at Charles University's Faculty of Social Sciences.

Martina Dvořáková was so tired of the gender imbalance in household labour in Czechia that she did something about it, creating a Fair Household audit. It's a questionnaire that helps couples reflect on who does what in the home – and whether that division of work is truly equitable. I discussed several aspects of the project with Dvořáková, as well as why the term “feminist” continues to be frowned up in this country.

Petr Brod grew up in a German-speaking Jewish family in communist Prague, soon learning it was wiser to converse in Czech in public. Brod fulfilled his ambition of becoming a journalist following a move to West Germany in his late teens, and found considerable success; after a stint at the BBC that saw him work on some of its top political shows, he joined Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which posted him to his hometown when the Velvet Revolution ushered in democracy in Czechoslovakia. When we spoke Brod, today 73, also discussed his friendship with protest singer Karel Kryl – and what might have happened if the Sudeten Germans had not been expelled after the war.

Pavla Niklová has been the director of the Jewish Museum in Prague, one of the oldest institutions of its kind in the world, for around a year and a half. When we spoke at her office on the edge of the city's Jewish Quarter, the conversation took in everything from Niklová's own background to whether the museum has been much impacted by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Miroslav Wanek is the leader of Už jsme doma, a Czech alternative band who this year are celebrating 40 years of existence. Už jsme doma have performed in over three dozen countries, most notably in the US, where they have notched up a remarkable 800-plus shows. Wanek, today 62, also has other strings to his bow. He could have entered politics after playing an active role in the Velvet Revolution in his hometown of Teplice, has taught at Prague's FAMU film school and worked on a highly popular animated series.

If you've been to Prague in recent years, chances are high that you've encountered the work of Pavel Fuksa. The graphic designer is behind a series of official posters welcoming visitors to the city – and encouraging them to be on good behaviour. Fuksa, who is 42, has in the past worked for several of the world's largest brands, including Nike, Facebook and Lego. What's more, he is deeply interested in football, so when we met in the downtown area I also spoke with him about which Prague club has had the most visually impressive strip, and when.

Waves by Jiří Mádl wasn't only the most successful Czech film at the box office in 2024: the movie, which centres on events at Czechoslovak Radio at the time of the Soviet invasion, is also one of the biggest cinema hits the country has seen in the modern era. Now Waves is also aiming for international glory, having made the shortlist of 15 pictures in contention for the Best International Oscar, with the actual nominations set to be announced in mid-January. Just after the shortlist was announced, I spoke with writer-director Mádl, who first found fame as an actor and had made two previous films before coming out with a gripping story set in one of the most tumultuous moments of Czechia's modern history.

Regular media appearances made biochemist Jan Konvalinka a well-known figure in Czechia during the Covid crisis, a period he calls the pinnacle of his professional life. A one-time vice rector at Prague's Charles University, he is today director of the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Czech Academy of Sciences – and spearheaded its establishment of an outpost in Boston this year. Just last week Professor Konvalinka announced that his IOCB, in conjunction with others, was waiving licensing fees for HIV drugs for relatively poor countries.

A new book reveals the untold story of Czechoslovakia's complex relations with terrorists and revolutionaries from the Middle East and elsewhere in the Cold War period. Watching the Jackals by historian Daniela Richterová draws on intelligence files to show how major figures such as Carlos the Jackal, Che Guevara and a mastermind of the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre visited Prague, often repeatedly, in the latter decades of the communist era. It also explores Czechoslovakia's own attitude to international terrorism. I discussed her groundbreaking findings with Richterová, who is based at King's College London.

More than two dozen Czech Centres on four continents represent a shop window for Czech culture around the world. But what more can the country do to boost its international image? And how does the network decide where to open, or close, branches? I discussed those questions, and way more, with the director of the Czech Centres, Jitka Pánek Jurková, who took up the post a year ago this month, at the organisation's headquarters on Prague's Wenceslas Square.

Prague's Semafor theatre was the most significant arts institution in 1960s Czechoslovakia, ushering in a new era against the backdrop of a slow political thaw in the communist country. Semafor was centred on the song-writing duo of Jiří Suchý and Jiří Šlitr and gave starts to a whole generation of enormous and enduring pop stars. Top Czech music writer Pavel Klusák explores the theatre's great decade in his brand new book Suchý and Šlitr: Semafor 1959–1969 – and shared his insights at our studios in Vinohrady.  

Tom Gross campaigned for Roma rights and was active in the media in early 1990s Prague. However, the Englishman had had some remarkable experiences in the city even before joining the influx of young westerners to Czechoslovakia's new democracy. These included covert deliveries to leading dissidents in the communist period – and inadvertently being in close proximity to some of the world's most notorious terrorists. Gross shared his stories at our studios in Vinohrady.  

Osamu Okamura was born in Tokyo to Japanese-Czech parents but moved to Prague while still an infant. An architect by profession, he is involved in a wide slew of activities, from academic work to popularising the concept of liveable cities among the general public. His family name is well-known in Czechia largely thanks to his brother Tomio Okamura, who heads a leading anti-EU political party, while a second sibling, Hayato Okamura, is also an MP.

The poet and veteran broadcaster Igor Pomerantsev has been living in Prague since the mid-1990s, when his station, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, moved to the Czech capital. Born in Russia but raised in Ukraine, Pomerantsev left the Soviet Union at the end of his 20s after being accused of circulating “anti-Soviet literature”. He and his family later settled in London, where he worked for the Russian section of the BBC World Service. I spoke to Igor Pomerantsev, who is today 76, at our studios in Vinohrady.

Englishman Adam Stewart is the founder and artistic director of the Prague Youth Theatre, a thriving company bring together around 200 children and teenagers from dozens of different nations in the Czech capital. He is also a leading member of the Cimrman English Theatre; it performs plays “by” the much-loved Czech comedic character Jára Cimrman to English-speaking audiences and recently celebrated 10 years of existence. I spoke to Stewart at the PYT's offices in the Vršovice district. 

New documentary World Between Us follows Czech photographer Marie Tomanová as her career skyrockets in New York. The intimate film is also a portrait of Tomanová's art historian husband, Thomas Beachdel – and reflects the close friendship between the photographer and its director, fellow Czech Marie Dvořáková. I caught up with Dvořáková, a one-time Student Oscar winner who has also spent a large part of her life in the US, days after the documentary's world premiere.

US singer Anne Marie Kenny first came to Czechoslovakia in 1990 at the invitation of President Václav Havel, who facilitated a concert for her at a Prague club. She later launched a successful employment and training agency and remained in her ancestral homeland for the rest of the decade. Kenny shares these stories and much more in her memoir A Song for Bohemia, which has just been launched in Czech under the title Moje píseň pro Čechy. We spoke at the café at Prague's House of the Black Madonna.

This year the Ecstasy of St. Theresa, perhaps the best-known Czech indie band of the 1990s and 2000s, delighted fans by returning to the stage after a hiatus of almost a decade. And the group, whose core members are founder Jan P. Muchow and singer and actress Kateřina Winterová, are also planning to release new music, the former says in an interview conducted at his Prague studio. Muchow also discusses his work as an in-demand film music composer and producer – and recording at the Berlin studio where David Bowie created some of his greatest work.   

The Czech-born, US-based illustrator and writer Petr Sís has just seen the publication of his latest work, a book of In Praise of Mystery by American poet laureate Ada Limon. In a project years in the making, the poem has also been etched onto a NASA spaceship bound for Jupiter's moon Europa. In an interview from his home in New York State, Sís discussed the new book as well as his poster for the multiple Oscar-winning movie Amadeus, released four decades ago this year. He also shared some insights into his latest project, which takes inspiration from his own colourful experiences in the US around the same time.

Evan Rail's The Absinthe Forger is a true crime story that also explores the fascinating history of the spirit itself. Central to the new book is the absinthe produced before the “evil drink” was banned virtually everywhere in the early 20th century – only to make a comeback in the 1990s, a revival in which Czechia played a major part. Rail, a long-time resident of Prague, discussed that aspect of the story, and much more, at our studios in Vinohrady.

As director of the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, Marek Hovorka is one of the most important people in the field of documentaries in Czechia. The 44-year-old started the event while still at school and today it draws many thousands of film buffs to the usually sleepy Vysočina town every year. Ahead of the 28th edition of Ji.hlava I caught up with Hovorka to discuss the festival's development, changes this year – and the outlook for the future.

Jana Prikryl was five, and called Jana Přikrylová, when her parents fled communist Czechoslovakia in the early 1980s and built a new life in the West. She has since gone on to become a successful poet and a top editor at the highly respected New York Review of Books. But how much did initially speaking Czech shape the writer's approach to language? I discussed that question and many more with Prikryl, who was speaking from her home in New York.

UK public relations man Euan Edworthy has called Prague home for the last three decades. In that time he has been involved in a number of initiatives, perhaps most notably building a monument to Czechoslovak WWII RAF aviators in the city's Klárov district, that have earned him UK honour the MBE for services to Czech-British relations. We spoke at the offices of his company Best Communications, right in the heart of the Old Town.

When Milan Babík was appointed director of the Václav Havel Library recently his name was not familiar to many. That is in large part because he had spent the previous three decades in the United States, where he effectively emigrated as a teenager, in search of educational opportunity. When I spoke to Mr. Babík at the Library, a stone's throw from Prague's Národní, we discussed the institution's mission and perceptions of Václav Havel today. But our conversation began with his own early life.

The anonymous writer behind the Czech Please social media accounts has been reviewing restaurants in Prague for over a decade and a half. Also going by the pen name Brewsta, Czech Please has built up a large and dedicated following as one of Czechia's best-known English-language food bloggers. When we met at a cool Prague café, we discussed the city's dining scene at length – but I first asked Czech Please a little about himself.

Veronika Tuckerová has been teaching Czech Studies at Harvard University for the past decade. But she has also done extensive research into the Prague German-language author Franz Kafka. Indeed, the academic is currently preparing a book entitled Reading Kafka in Prague: The Reception of Franz Kafka in Czechoslovakia, which mainly looks at changing perceptions of the writer in the communist period, when his works were for the most part banned. I spoke to Veronika Tuckerová at our Prague studios.

The new owner of the Prague Lions discusses why he feels the time is right for American football in Europe and says it could become Czechia's third favourite sport.