Culture

You see it every time you change your clothes, or when taking bath – naked human body – something we can see now almost on every TV channel and in every movie. But however outrageous it can be for some people, it is true that naked human body has inspired many artists for centuries – one example for all – Leonardo da Vinci.

It is to say that nude does not necessarily equal obscene. On the contrary, nudity can be portrayed very cleanly. And that is the case of a new exhibition in Manes gallery. It is called The Geometry of Nudity and we are talking here about pure artistic non-sexual nudity. It is truly wonderful.

The black and white pictures are from Czech photographer Pavel Brunclik. As models he had chosen ballet soloists from the National Theater in Prague. And he had chosen right. The effect is magical.

This exhibition is really eye-pleasing and I can recommend it for the whole family. Don’t worry, you will not see anything you don’t want to see. After seeing this exhibition you will feel like there is nothing as natural as nudity and that geometry is just as fascinating.

You will find Manes along the Vltava river in Masarykovo nabrezi 250. Take trams 17, 21 or bus 176, station Jiraskovo namesti. Open is daily except for Mondays from 10 am to 6 pm. This exhibition runs till July 31.

You have now a great chance to see a traveling exhibition called Money of China. This exhibition was put together by the National Library of the Czech Republic and the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the Czech Republic. And it truly is interesting.

China has a long and fascinating history. For many people in Europe, China is a huge distant country with a communistic regime and population that is fairly big. Most recently, China has become the country with cheap labor force driving all European producers mad.

Anyway, this exhibition is about the history of money in China from the very beginning up to the present day. And it is to say that China is one of the world’s oldest civilizations so you will see some progress – from the shells, through money in shape of knives – neat idea, isn’t it? – through the coin money and paper money as we know them today.

In the exhibition there are English posters with brief history of every period. You will read about the problems with establishment of paper money, you will read about the unique status of Hong Kong, about the reforms that changed the planned economy into the market economy – yes it is really there! – and of course about the new versions of Renminbi, the official currency in China with its Yuan.

The exhibition is in the Klementinum Gallery, 1st floor. Klementinum itself is worth visiting so you can make two exhibitions at one time. ? It runs till August 26. Klementinum is in street Krizovnicka 190. Best accessible from the Charles Bridge.

March has come and that means that Febio is here as well! And that is great news!! At least for me, because I love good movies and Febiofest is about good movies only.

The official name goes like this: Prague International Film Festival Febiofest. And this year it will be already 14th edition!! So it is no novelty or non-professional festival. Not at all! It is the best event in Prague!!

Febiofest is not a typical film festival. It is a special event for fans of films which cannot usually be seen in cinemas – besides the premieres of the most relevant films of contemporary cinema, it also presents low-budget and alternative films, experimental cinematography, documentaries as well as retrospectives.

With Febio you travel the whole world. It introduces films from all regions. You can choose from Asia, Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, etc. Last year, festival presented 336 films from 65 countries! The spectrum of movies is incredible. Everyone will find his or her film here, I am sure about this.

Febio grew from a small club event into the largest audio-visual festival in the Czech Republic. It is the second most prestigious festival in the country right after Karlovy Vary. But this is maybe only a question of time.

This all takes place within nine days -this year from 22nd to 30th March. Visit Village Cinema Andel on subways station Andel (yellow line B) as soon as you can to buy tickets! They cost 79 CZK and are usually very soon gone!!!

The Prague part of the Febiofest is then followed by a small representative program selection presented in six largest towns of the Czech Republic.

Prague Krizik´s Fountain (Křižíkova fontána), often referred to as the Dancing Fountain or Musical Fountain, is a spectacular show of water, light, music and dance. It is truly magical and I would recommend it to everyone! It is not only for couples, although the performance can be really romantic, it just depends which show you choose.

The musical scale will address everyone. There are four shows at night, starting at 8 p.m., and after full hour another show follows so that the last performance starts at 11 p.m., ending at midnight. Those four shows are usually very different from one another – one being a classical piece of Mozart, and the other one is from Metallica. As I said, everyone will find there the music of his/her heart.

The best shows are at nigh when it is already dark out because only then you can fully enjoy the light show. If you pick the show with music that you like there is no possible way for you not to love it! The music and light arrangements goes so well with water creations that one can hardly believe it is not a fairy tale. Only here you can really feel the music! Only here the water sings to you and dances for you!

There are also musical performances presented by a top dance ensemble, such as Romeo and Juliet or the Swan Lake, usually starting at 10 p.m. They dance in the middle of the fountain pool! With the play of lights, high water geysers, hundreds of dancing water drops and the most beautiful melodies it is just unforgettable!

The Krizik´s Fountain is equipped with incredible 3,000 nozzles managed by fifty water pumps, and with 1,200 underwater floodlights of various colours.

The shows take place even in inclement weather as most of the seats are roofed. So you won’t get wet unless you get too close to the water geyser.

To name just some music that is played there – for classical music it is Antonin Dvorak, Bedrich Smetana, Antonio Vivaldi, Giuseppe Verdi, W.A. Mozart; for film music it is Titanic or Gladiator; great shows are with music from the Queen or Michael Jackson.

The massive fountain is located at the Vystaviste – Prague Exhibition Grounds, constructed for the Prague’s Exhibition in 1891, and is easy to reach by tram – 5, 12 and 17, station Vystaviste. It is not far from the subway station Nadrazi Holesovice (red line C).

There are few things quite like this fountain in the world so you should definitely pay it a visit!

Is the current generation more tolerant than the one before? Is intolerance still present in democratic states these days? This and other questions are coming to mind when walking through the Klementinum, which is the National Library of the Czech Republic.

Until March 15 you have the great chance to see an exhibition called Tolerant – Intolerant. This unique exhibition consists of anti-racist posters made by Czech university students as well as students from the Prague Goethe-Institute.

The main themes of the exhibition are racism, racially motivated extremism and neo-nationalism. Organizers of the exposition want to stress the unsetting reality – alarmingly, there are still people who doubt such events as the victims of Holocaust; there are nationalistic parties in power of some European countries… Those are things we should not hide but talk about. So that there is no second WWII since nationalism caused all the wars that happened in Europe in the last century, including the recent military conflicts in the Balkans!!

The exhibition is held in the ground floor exhibition corridor of Klementinum, which is not far from the Old Town Square. It is open from Monday to Saturday from 9:00 to 19:00. The entrance fee is 5 CZK only.

The partner of the Tolerant – Intolerant project is the Czech-German Fund for the Future.

On this banknote could be no one else but Tomas Garrigue Masaryk – the chief founder and first president of independent Czechoslovakia.

He was a Czech statesman, sociologist and philosopher who was also an advocate of Czechoslovak independence, but not from the very beginning. He always supported democratic policies. He, however, did not openly support the idea of independence before First World War, but rather the transformation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire into a federation of self-governing nations.

When the WWI broke out, he knew that being part of the Empire is no longer possible, and had to flee the country to avoid arrest for treason. In the exile he formed the Czechoslovak national council, which was with the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, recognised by the Allies as the provisional government of Czechoslovakia. Masaryk proclaimed the independence of Czechoslovakia on the steps of the Capitol in Washington, D.C..

It is no wonder that Masaryk became the first president of the Czechoslovakia, and was reelected three more times. Masaryk resigned in 1935 because of his advanced age. He died two years afterwards at the age of 87.

Masaryk enjoyed and still does almost legendary authority among the Czech people. He was the great example of a perfect president. He was a man remarkable not only because of his personal courage and devotion to democracy, but for the harmony between his personality and work – the astonishing unity of his words and deeds.

During his presidency, Czechoslovakia became an island of democracy, a great educational workshop and a powerful industrial country. It developed a political system marked not only by free and fair elections but also by the rule of law, separation of powers, and the protection of fundamental liberties of speech, assembly, religion and property. This, however, lasted only 20 years. With Hitler and the Munich Agreement, but that is another story.

An interesting thing about Masaryk is that he married an American woman – Charlotte Garrigue – from whom he took his middle name, which is a radical move even by today’s standards, much less those of a century ago!

Masaryk gained the nickname of the „President-Liberator“ or the „daddy Masaryk“, meaning that he was close to everybody’s hearts. Many refer to him by his initials: TGM.

On the other side of this banknote there is Prague architecture.

See also Czech crown

Czechs have always loved music. How else could you explain so many famous composers like Smetana, Dvorak, Janacek from a country this big? And when we talk about Czech music we can’t leave out Emma Destinova, or Emmy Destinn (1878-1930), who was one of the greatest opera singers of all time – and yes, that is the lady on the 2 000 CZK banknote.

Her real name was Emilia Pavlina Venceslava Kittova, but she adopted her music teacher’s last name for the stage. And soon she became an international opera diva performing in Berlin’s Court Opera, London’s Convent Garden as well as New York’s Metropolitan.

She was known for her ability to learn very quickly. She was fluent in German, Italian, French and English, all in addition to her native Czech. This skill helped her learn roles in several languages without problems. Not to mention that before beginning her vocal studies, she learned how to play both piano and violin so well that she could read any music at sight.

Her roles were various. To name only some – Verdi’s Aida, Mozart’s Pamina and Donna Anna, Wagner’s Eva, Elsa and Senta, Strauss´s Salome, Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. She sang the first Carmen to be recorded, although in German and not French.

Her life was really extraordinary. A movie about her was made in 1979. It is a Czech movie called „Divine Emma”. She gave her final concert in London in 1928, at the age of fifty. She died at the relatively young age of 52.

On the other side of the banknote there is a Muse with violins.

See also Czech crown

On this banknote there is Frantisek Palacky who was a significant Czech historian and a politician. He was born in 1798 and died in 1876 which was, thanks to Palacky himself, a time period of the Czech National Revival – a movement which aimed to revive the Czech language, culture and history.

In this time, Czechs were part of the Austrian Habsburk empire – German was the official language back then. Theatres, newspapers, schools, just everything was in German and Czech language was fading away. And that is when Palacky came up with his monumental work The History of Bohemia, the first great synthesis of Czech history.

This book, which comes down to the year 1526, was founded on laborious research in the local archives of Bohemia and in the libraries of the chief cities of Europe. This book, although first printed in German and then translated into Czech, shook Czech national consciousness by reminding the nation’s past. And that is when the Czech National Revival started. It took few more decades till people were not ashamed to speak Czech anymore.

Palacky is the founder of modern Czech historiography and a leading figure in the political life of 19th-century Bohemia. Without Palacky, Czechs would most probably have spoken German by now.

See also Czech crown

On the 500 CZK banknote there is painted Czech authoress Bozena Nemcova. Her best known and widely read book is named Babicka, in English Grandmother, published in 1855. It is a book about her childhood and her happy memories of her kind and wise grandmother, describing country life in the Czech lands in the 19th century. Czech kids read this book in schools even today.

Her life is from the very beginning shrouded in mystery – we don’t even know when she was born! Not even the year!! On her tombstone it says 1820 but her school records say 1818 or even further 1817! And the mystery remaines about her parents. Nemcova was born before her lawful parents – laundress and coachman for the duchess of Racibor, Katerina Zakanska – were married. So she was an illegitimate child. Since Nemcova was so different in appearance from these parents and the fact that she was allowed special privileges at the castle and was tutored there, the question is whether she wasn’t the illegitimate child of the duchess herself.

That is however not so important about her. The important thing is that she was a writer which was in her times quite unusual – woman and a writer. Back then writers were just among men. Using today’s words we would call her a feminist. She was breaking the ice also by trying to earn her living with her writing skills only which was, again, very bizarre. On the top of it, she wrote in Czech in a time when German was the number one language. It was not because she couldn’t speak German as she was well educated. She wrote in Czech because she believed that Czech was a nice language and should not be lost in favor of German.

She was very strong woman who was not afraid to challenge social and political attitudes if her time. On the other side of the banknote there is most likely a Muse.

See also Czech crown

On the 200 CZK banknote there is Jan Amos Komensky, in English John Amos Comenius (1592-1670). Comenius was a Czech teacher, scientist, educator, writer and a protestant bishop. Because of his religion he was forced to leave Bohemia and therefore lived and worked in many different countries in Europe, and thus Comenius became known as the „Teacher of Nations“. He has been stamped the „Father of Modern Education“ since he came up with new ideas concerning teaching methods that we still use today.

Children in Comenius days were taught to repeat and memorize things which was, according to Comenius, of no use because repeating won’t get the students to think about the problem. Rather the subjects taught should have practical use and, where possible, demonstration and observation should be used. His motto was „learning through play“. He also believed that children should be never punished for failing but rather helped and encouraged. If Comenius’ ideas sound modern to you, it is because they were not applied for centuries.

He wrote many didactical books. To name some – The School of Infancy was a handbook for parents and educators, which was the first systematic pedagogic work in the world dealing with pre-school education. And the book Orbis Pictus, which means World in Pictures, was the first picture book for children used up to 19th century in the whole Europe.

One of many very interesting things about Comenius is that he was asked to become the first President of Harvard University. And a European Union school partnership program – Comenius – has been named after him.

On the other side of the banknote there are hands of a child and an adult, and written Orbis Pictus, commemorating the work of Comenius and that wisdom is passed from generation to generation.

The banknote is orange maybe because Comenius is buried in Naarden, Holland, and orange is Holland’s national colour.

See also main site about Czech currency (ceska koruna)