1.
Prague
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Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. It is the 14th largest city in the European Union and it is also the historical capital of Bohemia. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city has a temperate climate, with warm summers and chilly winters. Prague has been a political, cultural, and economic centre of central Europe with waxing and waning fortunes during its history and it was an important city to the Habsburg Monarchy and its Austro-Hungarian Empire. Prague is home to a number of cultural attractions, many of which survived the violence. Main attractions include the Prague Castle, the Charles Bridge, Old Town Square with the Prague astronomical clock, since 1992, the extensive historic centre of Prague has been included in the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. The city has more than ten major museums, along with theatres, galleries, cinemas. An extensive modern public transportation system connects the city, also, it is home to a wide range of public and private schools, including Charles University in Prague, the oldest university in Central Europe. Prague is classified as an Alpha- global city according to GaWC studies, Prague ranked sixth in the Tripadvisor world list of best destinations in 2016. Its rich history makes it a popular tourist destination, and the city more than 6.4 million international visitors annually. Prague is the fifth most visited European city after London, Paris, Istanbul, the region was settled as early as the Paleolithic age. In the last century BC, the Celts were slowly driven away by Germanic tribes, around the area where present-day Prague stands, the 2nd century map of Ptolemaios mentioned a Germanic city called Casurgis. In the following century, the Czech tribes built several fortified settlements in the area, most notably in Levý Hradec, Butovice and in the Šárka valley. The construction of what came to be known as the Prague Castle began near the end of the 9th century, the first masonry under Prague Castle dates from the year 885 at the latest. The other prominent Prague fort, the Přemyslid fort Vyšehrad, was founded in the 10th century, Prague Castle is dominated by the cathedral, which was founded in 1344, but completed in the 20th century. The legendary origins of Prague attribute its foundation to the 8th century Czech duchess and prophetess Libuše and her husband, Přemysl, legend says that Libuše came out on a rocky cliff high above the Vltava and prophesied, I see a great city whose glory will touch the stars. She ordered a castle and a town called Praha to be built on the site, a 17th century Jewish chronicler David Solomon Ganz, citing Cyriacus Spangenberg, claimed that the city was founded as Boihaem in c.1306 BC by an ancient king, Boyya. The region became the seat of the dukes, and later kings of Bohemia, under Roman Emperor Otto II the area became a bishopric in 973
2.
Czechoslovakia
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From 1939 to 1945, following its forced division and partial incorporation into Nazi Germany, the state did not de facto exist but its government-in-exile continued to operate. From 1948 to 1990, Czechoslovakia was part of the Soviet bloc with a command economy and its economic status was formalized in membership of Comecon from 1949, and its defense status in the Warsaw Pact of May 1955. A period of liberalization in 1968, known as the Prague Spring, was forcibly ended when the Soviet Union, assisted by several other Warsaw Pact countries. In 1993, Czechoslovakia split into the two states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Form of state 1918–1938, A democratic republic, 1938–1939, After annexation of Sudetenland by Nazi Germany in 1938, the region gradually turned into a state with loosened connections among the Czech, Slovak, and Ruthenian parts. A large strip of southern Slovakia and Carpatho-Ukraine was annexed by Hungary, 1939–1945, The region was split into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the Slovak Republic. A government-in-exile continued to exist in London, supported by the United Kingdom, United States and its Allies, after the German invasion of Russia, Czechoslovakia adhered to the Declaration by United Nations and was a founding member of the United Nations. 1946–1948, The country was governed by a government with communist ministers, including the prime minister. Carpathian Ruthenia was ceded to the Soviet Union, 1948–1989, The country became a socialist state under Soviet domination with a centrally planned economy. In 1960, the country became a socialist republic, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It was a state of the Soviet Union. 1989–1990, The federal republic consisted of the Czech Socialist Republic, 1990–1992, Following the Velvet Revolution, the state was renamed the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, consisting of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. Neighbours Austria 1918–1938, 1945–1992 Germany Hungary Poland Romania 1918–1938 Soviet Union 1945–1991 Ukraine 1991–1992 Topography The country was of irregular terrain. The western area was part of the north-central European uplands, the eastern region was composed of the northern reaches of the Carpathian Mountains and lands of the Danube River basin. Climate The weather is mild winters and mild summers, influenced by the Atlantic Ocean from the west, Baltic Sea from the north, and Mediterranean Sea from the south. The area was long a part of the Austro Hungarian Empire until the Empire collapsed at the end of World War I, the new state was founded by Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, who served as its first president from 14 November 1918 to 14 December 1935. He was succeeded by his ally, Edvard Beneš. The roots of Czech nationalism go back to the 19th century, nationalism became a mass movement in the last half of the 19th century
3.
Film director
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A film director is a person who directs the making of a film. Generally, a film director controls a films artistic and dramatic aspects, the director has a key role in choosing the cast members, production design, and the creative aspects of filmmaking. Under European Union law, the director is viewed as the author of the film, the film director gives direction to the cast and crew and creates an overall vision through which a film eventually becomes realized, or noticed. Directors need to be able to mediate differences in creative visions, there are many pathways to becoming a film director. Some film directors started as screenwriters, cinematographers, film editors or actors, other film directors have attended a film school. Some outline a general plotline and let the actors dialogue, while others control every aspect. Some directors also write their own screenplays or collaborate on screenplays with long-standing writing partners, some directors edit or appear in their films, or compose the music score for their films. Film directors create a vision through which a film eventually becomes realized/noticed. Realizing this vision includes overseeing the artistic and technical elements of production, as well as directing the shooting timetable. This entails organizing the crew in such a way as to achieve their vision of the film. This requires skills of leadership, as well as the ability to maintain a singular focus even in the stressful. Moreover, it is necessary to have an eye to frame shots and to give precise feedback to cast and crew, thus. Thus the director ensures that all involved in the film production are working towards an identical vision for the completed film. The set of varying challenges he or she has to tackle has been described as a jigsaw puzzle with egos. It adds to the pressure that the success of a film can influence when, omnipresent are the boundaries of the films budget. Additionally, the director may also have to ensure an intended age rating, thus, the position of film director is widely considered to be a highly stressful and demanding one. It has been said that 20-hour days are not unusual, under European Union law, the film director is considered the author or one of the authors of a film, largely as a result of the influence of auteur theory. Auteur theory is a film criticism concept that holds that a directors film reflects the directors personal creative vision
4.
Theatre director
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The directors function is to ensure the quality and completeness of theatre production and to lead the members of the creative team into realizing their artistic vision for it. If the production he or she is mounting is a new piece of writing or a translation of a play, in contemporary theatre, after the playwright, the director is generally the primary visionary, making decisions on the artistic concept and interpretation of the play and its staging. Different directors occupy different places of authority and responsibility, depending on the structure, Directors use a wide variety of techniques, philosophies, and levels of collaboration. In ancient Greece, the birthplace of European drama, the writer bore principal responsibility for the staging of his plays, the author-director would also train the chorus, sometimes compose the music, and supervise every aspect of production. The fact that the director was called didaskalos, the Greek word for teacher, a miniature by Jean Fouquet from 1460 bears one of the earliest depictions of a director at work. Holding a prompt book, the central figure directs, with the aid of a long stick, from Renaissance times up until the 19th century, the role of director was often carried by the actor-manager. This would usually be an actor in a troupe who took the responsibility for choosing the repertoire of work, staging it. This was the case for instance with Commedia dellArte companies and English actor-managers like Colley Cibber, the modern theatre director can be said to have originated in the staging of elaborate spectacles of the Meininger Company under George II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. The management of large numbers of extras and complex stagecraft matters necessitated an individual to take on the role of overall coordinator. This gave rise to the role of the director in modern theatre, simultaneously, Constantin Stanislavski, principally an actor-manager, would set up the Moscow Art Theatre in Russia and similarly emancipate the role of the director as artistic visionary. The French regisseur is also used to mean a stage director. A more common term for theatre director in French is metteur en scène, post World War II, the actor-manager slowly started to disappear, and directing become a fully fledged artistic activity within the theatre profession. The director originating artistic vision and concept, and realizing the staging of a production, a cautionary note was introduced by the famed director Sir Tyrone Guthrie who said the only way to learn how to direct a play, is. To get a group of actors simple enough to allow you to let you direct them, most European countries nowadays know some form of professional directing training, usually at drama schools or conservatoires, or at universities. In the early days such programmes typically led to the staging of one major production in the third year. At the University of California, Irvine, Keith Fowler led for many years a programme based on the premise that directors are autodidacts who need as many opportunities to direct as possible. Under Fowler, graduate student directors would stage between five and ten productions during their residencies, with each production receiving detailed critiques. Directing is an artform that has grown with the development of theatre theory, with the emergence of new trends in theatre, so too have directors adopted new methodologies and engaged in new practices
5.
Screenwriter
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One famous screenwriter is Jack Rosenthal, who has written for various TV shows over the years, including Londons Burning and Coronation Street. No education is required to become a screenwriter, just good storytelling abilities. Screenwriters are not hired employees, they are contracted freelancers, most, if not all, screenwriters start their careers writing on speculation, meaning they write without being hired or paid for it. If such a script is sold, it is called a spec script, what separates a professional screenwriter from an amateur screenwriter is that professional screenwriters are usually represented by a talent agency. Also, professional screenwriters do not often work for free, whereas amateur screenwriters will often work for free and are considered writers in training, spec scripts are usually penned by unknown professional screenwriters and amateur screenwriters. There are a legion of would-be screenwriters who attempt to enter the industry but it often takes years of trial-and-error, failure. In Writing Screenplays that Sell, Michael Hague writes Screenplays have become, for the last half of century, closet writers who used to dream of the glory of getting into print now dream of seeing their story on the big or small screen. Every screenplay and teleplay begins with a thought or idea, and screenwriters use those ideas to write scripts, with the intention of selling them and having them produced. In some cases, the script is based on a property, such as a book or persons life story. The majority of the time, a film project gets initiated by a screenwriter and because they initiated the project and these are referred to as exclusive assignments or pitched assignments. Screenwriters who often pitch new projects, whether original or an adaptation, when word is put out about a project a film studio, production company, or producer wants done, these are referred to as open assignments. In situations where screenwriters are competing for an assignment, more established writers will usually win these assignments. A screenwriter can also be approached and personally offered a writing assignment, many screenwriters also work as full or part-time script doctors, attempting to better a script to suit the desires of a director or studio. For instance, studio management may have a complaint that the motivations of the characters are unclear or that the dialogue is weak, script-doctoring can be quite lucrative, especially for the better known writers. David Mamet and John Sayles, for instance, fund the movies they direct themselves, usually from their own screenplays, by writing and doctoring scripts for others. In fact, some writers make very profitable careers out of being the ninth or tenth writer to work on a piece, in many cases, working on projects that never see exposure to an audience of any size. Many up and coming screenwriters also ghost write projects and allow more established screenwriters to take credit for the project to increase the chances of it getting picked up. After a screenwriter finishes a project, he or she pairs with a representative, such as a producer, director, literary agent, entertainment lawyer
6.
Humanism
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The term was coined in 1808 by the early nineteenth century German educational reformer and theologian Friedrich Niethammer and gradually adopted into English. Niethammer had wished to introduce into German education the humane values of ancient Greece, the word Humanism is ultimately derived from the Latin concept humanitas, and, like most other words ending in -ism, entered English in the nineteenth century. Those who earnestly desire and seek after these are most highly humanized. For the desire to pursue of that kind of knowledge, and the training given by it, has granted to humanity alone of all the animals. Gellius says that in his day humanitas is commonly used as a synonym for philanthropy – or kindness and he himself was involved in public affairs. By assigning pride of place to Paideia in his comment on the etymology of humanitas, gelliuss writings fell into obscurity during the middle ages, but during the Italian Renaissance, Gellius became a favorite author. Teachers and scholars of Greek and Latin grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, during the French Revolution, and soon after, in Germany, humanism began to refer to an ethical philosophy centered on humankind, without attention to the transcendent or supernatural. The designation Religious Humanism refers to organized groups that sprang up during the late-nineteenth and it is similar to Protestantism, although centered on human needs, interests, and abilities rather than the supernatural. The first Humanist Manifesto was issued by a conference held at the University of Chicago in 1933, signatories included the philosopher John Dewey, but the majority were ministers and theologians. But in the century, during the French Enlightenment, a more ideological use of the term had come into use. In 1765, the author of an article in a French Enlightenment periodical spoke of The general love of humanity. A virtue hitherto quite nameless among us, and which we will venture to call humanism, for the time has come to create a word for such a beautiful and necessary thing. The latter part of the 18th and the early 19th centuries saw the creation of numerous philanthropic and benevolent societies dedicated to human betterment. Humanism began to acquire a negative sense, the Oxford English Dictionary records the use of the word humanism by an English clergyman in 1812 to indicate those who believe in the mere humanity of Christ, i. e. Unitarians and Deists. Human-centered philosophy that rejected the supernatural may also be found circa 1500 BCE in the Lokayata system of Indian philosophy, nasadiya Sukta, a passage in the Rig Veda, contains one of the first recorded assertions of agnosticism. Another instance of ancient humanism as a system of thought is found in the Gathas of Zarathustra. Zarathustras philosophy in the Gathas lays out a conception of humankind as thinking beings, dignified with choice, in China, Yellow Emperor is regarded as the humanistic primogenitor. Sage kings such as Yao and Shun are humanistic figures as recorded, king Wu of Zhou has the famous saying, Humanity is the Ling of the world
7.
Cinematography
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Typically, a lens is used to repeatedly focus the light reflected from objects into real images on the light-sensitive surface inside a camera during a questioned exposure, creating multiple images. With an electronic sensor, this produces an electrical charge at each pixel. The result with photographic emulsion is a series of invisible latent images on the film stock, the images on the film stock are played back at a rapid speed and projected onto a screen, creating the illusion of motion. Cinematography finds uses in fields of science and business as well as for entertainment purposes. The word cinematography was created from the Greek words κίνημα, meaning movement, motion and γράφειν meaning to record, the word used to refer to the art, process, or job of filming movies, but later its meaning was restricted to motion picture photography. In the 1830s, moving images were produced on revolving drums and disks, with independent invention by Simon von Stampfer in Austria, Joseph Plateau in Belgium, and William Horner in Britain. In 1845, Francis Ronalds invented the first successful camera able to make recordings of the varying indications of meteorological. The cameras were supplied to numerous observatories around the world and some remained in use well into the 20th century. William Lincoln patented a device, in 1867, that showed animated pictures called the wheel of life or zoopraxiscope, in it, moving drawings or photographs were watched through a slit. On 19 June 1873, Eadweard Muybridge successfully photographed a horse named Sallie Gardner in fast motion using a series of 24 stereoscopic cameras. The cameras were arranged along a parallel to the horses. They were 21 inches apart to cover the 20 feet taken by the horse stride, although it was never played back at speed to create motion, this was the first step towards motion pictures. The late nineteenth to the twentieth century brought rise to the use of film not only for entertainment purposes. The experimental film Roundhay Garden Scene, filmed by Louis Le Prince on 14 October 1888, in Roundhay, Leeds and this movie was shot on paper film. W. K. L. Dickson, working under the direction of Thomas Alva Edison, was the first to design a successful apparatus and this camera took a series of instantaneous photographs on standard Eastman Kodak photographic emulsion coated onto a transparent celluloid strip 35 mm wide. The results of work were first shown in public in 1893, using the viewing apparatus also designed by Dickson. Contained within a box, only one person at a time looking into it through a peephole could view the movie. The Lumière brothers were the first to present projected, moving, photographic, in 1896, movie theaters were open in France, Italy, Brussels, and London
8.
Bohumil Hrabal
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Bohumil Hrabal was a Czech writer, regarded by many Czechs as one of the best writers of the 20th century. Hrabal was born in the city of Brno on 28 March 1914, in what was then the province of Moravia within Austria-Hungary, to an unmarried mother, Marie Božena Kiliánová. According to the organisers of a 2009 Hrabal exhibition in Brno, his father was probably Bohumil Blecha, a teachers son a year older than Marie. Marie’s parents opposed the idea of their daughter marrying Blecha, as he was about to serve in the Austro-Hungarian Army, four months after Hrabals birth World War I started, and Blecha was sent to the Italian front, before being invalided out of service. Blecha’s daughter, Drahomíra Blechová-Kalvodová, says her father told her when she was 18 that Hrabal was her half-brother, Bohumil and his biological father never met formally, according to Blechová-Kalvodová. Hrabal and Blechová-Kalvodová met twice, a dedication in a picture from 1994 says, To sister Drahomíra, Hrabal was baptised Bohumil František Kilián. Until the age of three, he lived mainly with his grandparents, Kateřina Kiliánová and Tomáš Kilián, in Brno while his mother worked in Polná as an assistant book-keeper in the towns brewery. František Hrabal, Hrabal’s stepfather, was a friend of Hrabal’s probable biological father, Marie and František married in February 1917, shortly before Bohumils second birthday. Hrabals half-brother, Břetislav Josef Hrabal, was later that year. The family moved in August 1919 to Nymburk, a town on the banks of the Labe. Both of Hrabals parents were active in amateur dramatics, Hrabal’s uncle was Bohuslav Kilián, a lawyer, journalist and publisher of the cultural magazines Salon and Měsíc. In 1920, Hrabal began at the school in Nymburk. In September 1925, he spent one year at a school in Brno. He failed the first year, he attended a technical secondary school in Nymburk. There too he struggled to concentrate on his studies, despite extra classes given to him by his uncle, in June 1934 Hrabal left school with a certificate that said he could be considered for a place at university on a technical course. Hrabal took private classes in Latin for a year, passing the exam in the town of Český Brod with an adequate grade on 3 October 1935. Four days later, on 7 October 1935, he registered at the Charles University in Prague to study for a law degree and he graduated only in March 1946 as Czech universities had been shut down in November 1939 and remained so until the end of Nazi occupation. During the war, he worked as a labourer and dispatcher in Kostomlaty, near Nymburk
listen)) (born 23 February 1938, Prague) is a Czech film director, theatre director, actor, and screenwriter. His films often combine a humanistic view of the world with sarcasm and provocative cinematography.[citation needed] Some of these films are adapted from works by Czech writers such as Bohumil Hrabal and Vladislav Vančura.
