In search of authenticity: Věra Chytilová's films from two eras

Czech film maker Vera Chytilova was the first woman ever who was allowed to study film direction at FAMU, the Film Academy in Prague. She was an important member of the generation of the Czech New Wave of the 1960s. Particularly well known internationally is Chytilova's film Daisies, which is regarded by critics as a highly innovative contribution to world cinema. This article traces the history of Chytilová's artistic development through the liberal 1960s in communist Czechoslovakia, when film making was free of ideological and commercial pressures, and compares it with her work made in the 1970s and 1980s, in an era when Czechoslovak film makers were under ideological pressure and worked in a society which had adopted conformism and consumerism. While it would appear that Chytilová mostly gave up her bold stylistic experimentation in this period of ‘normalisation’, she never gave up her personal integrity and successfully communicated her moral concern even under conditions of strong censorship and bureaucratic pressure

Dluhy českých vzdělanců [What the Czech intellectuals have failed to do]

This is a lecture which Jan Čulík gave during the Fourth Schwarzenberg meeting of Czech intellectuals, which took place in the Teplá monastery in Western Bohemia in October 1995. In the lecture, he criticises the inactivity of Czech intellectuals in the first years after the fall of communism and the fact that they tolerated nonsense and fake news, being disseminated by the new commercial media which had totally overwhelmed Czech public discourse. He also criticises what he sees as serious flaws of the Czech educational system. - The lecture provoked a passionate, often angry response from the leading Czech intellectuals who were present. Some of those present, however, agreed with Čulík's argumentation. The debate, provoked by Jan Čulík's lecture, was then published in Listy 1/1996 and the scan is enclosed here. Both the lecture and the debate are also available online, here: https://blisty.cz/art/109403-situace-je-porad-stejna-ne-li-horsi-dluhy-ceskych-vzdelancu-ve-zmatku-dnesni-ceske-spolecnosti.html

In the UK’s EU Renegotiation, Free Movement Remains the Concern for East Central Europe

In this article, published by the "European Futures" website, informs Jan Čulík about the reactions of the Visegrad countries of East Central Europe (Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland) to David Cameron's attempts to renegotiate the terms of UK membership of the European Union

From the Czech Republic to ‘Czechia’:Shaping Modern Identity

The recent announcement that the Czech Republic will adopt a shorted name, ‘Czechia’, is the product of decisions made by political elites without public input, writes Jan Čulík. He suggests that the debate which has followed, both within the country and internationally, is a testament to the uncertainty many people feel about their political identities today

Cosmopolitanism, immigration, state collapse and the oppression of women: A report from the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, June 30th - July 8th, 2023

No abstract available

Mystification as an artistic strategy in Milan Kundera's work

Using close reading of Kundera's texts, Jan Čulík argues that many arguments in Milan Kundera's literary works are deliberate provocations. Kundera's approach is undoubtedly related to post-modernism, although he used his mystification techniques long before the arrival of postmodernism, as early as in the Stalinist 1950s when he published fake quotes from Lenin in official Stalinist publications. In Jan Čulík's view, it is the purpose of Milan Kundera's systematic use of false facts, distortions and disrupted logic to warn his readers against against the unreliability of words and human communication. Kundera seems to argue that the world in its complexity is basically unknowable and the only thing that is left for us is, in despair, in our ignorace of what is going on around us, to carry out pranks

Dvě školy odpovědnosti [Two Lessons about Responsibility]

In the spring of 1996, Jan Čulík attended two conferences dealing with the role of the media in today's world. One of them, financed by the European Union, took place in Prague and the main role there was played by Vladimír Železný, the highly manipulative Chief Executive of Nova Television, the first post-communist, tabloid commercial TV station in Eastern Europe, which, on receiving its broadcasting licence in the Czech Republic broke all its terms - with absolute impunity. The other conference took place in London and was attended by the stars of serious English speaking journalism, Ben Bradlee, editor-in-chief of the Washington Post, Frederick Kempe, the editor-in-chief of the European edition of the Wall Street Journal and other major journalistic figures. The article reports on both conferences and highlights the shocking contrast between them. When Jan Čulík engaged Vladimír Železný in a debate in Prague, pointing out that his company is breaking the law, Železný's reaction was to try to silence him. He accused Čulík of "being jealous of Nova TV's commercial success

What matters in the Czech Republic now

This is Jan Čulík's presentation for this year's Conference of the Association of Slavíc, East European and Euroasian Studies, which took place virtually in the USA in November 2020. The presentation was given on Friday 6th November 2020. The presentation outlines three major issues in the current Czech public discourse: 1. islamophobia and hatred of refugees, 2. anticommunist protests against professional work of historians, 3. attempts to discredit the globally recognised Czech writer Milan Kundera. These topics are used to deflect citizens from real problems that the country is facing. As examples how literature and cinema reacts to the current situation in the Czech Republic, the presentation then discusses the first Czech fascist novel "Beyond the Alps" by David Zábranský and a new feature film "The Owners", which points out that Czechs are currently absolutely incapable of tackling their social and political problems

Jak bojovat proti nesmyslům [How to fight nonsense]

This is a Czech translation of Jan Čulík's contribution to the ASN 21 World Convention (Association for the Study of Nationalities) which took place online at Columbia University, New York, from 5th to 8th May, 2021. In this piece, Jan Čulík talks about the worrying convergence of Western and Eastern Europe: It was expected that after the fall of communism thirty two years ago, the East might gradually adopt Western democratic principles. In fact, what seems to have happened is that the West has adapted itself to the East and now both parts of Europe seem to be suffering from populism, xenophobia. They both seem to support of authoritarianism. Both parts of Europe, as well as the US, seem to be suffering from a mythological interpretation of their history, which seems to affect their current decision-making. Czech society is extremely tribal and it does not like when independent historians point out the current distortions in the received interpretation of the past. What is more, people seem to react to minor semantic signifiers which they use to pigeon hole and reject "unorthodox" commentators. These signifiers are often grossly misleading because they create an image of a person on the basis of a miniscule fragment of his or her argumentation. It is a challenge for historians and the students of nationalities how to fight against these misinterpretations, which seem to be getting worse as a result of the impact of social media