newyork

Tuesday, MAY 21 at 7 pm

Bohemian National Hall
3rd fl
321 E 73 St, NYC

Curated and moderated by Vera Dvorak.

PHOTOS on SVU NY Facebook

PANELISTS
André Fenton is a professor of neuroscience at New York University. He heads the Neurobiology of Cognition Laboratory, which studies how the brain stores experience as memories. Among other, the lab investigates the mechanisms of cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia, intellectual disability, and autism. It uses various tools, including genetics and molecular biology, recording of the brain’s electrical activities, neural imaging, quantitative behavioral studies of animals, and computer models. André first came to Prague from Canada, in early 1991 to work in the Institute of Physiology and to teach English at the Czech Technical University. He was inspired to become a scientist and after one and a half years, he left Prague for graduate school in New York. In 1997, he returned, this time as a visiting scholar to direct the Laboratory of Neurophysiology of Memory at the Czech Academy of Sciences. He lived in Prague intermittently until 2005. During his stay, he co-founded a neurodiagnostic company, BioSignal Group, of which he is still the President. He is now starting new collaborations with Prague scientists.

Maura Griffin is the founder and CEO of Blue Spark Financial, an investment advisory firm focused on helping women in life transitions such as divorce, widowhood, or retirement. She graduated with a B.A. in literature from Georgetown University and earned her M.B.A. at Columbia University. She splits her time between Manhattan and the Berkshires of Massachusetts. Maura started her career as a journalist, which led her to Prague. She worked at the Prague Post as a reporter in 1992 after working at the Associated Press in the US. In 1993, along with four friends, Maura started The Globe Bookstore & Coffeehouse – which is still running now. She was married and had her son Calvin in Prague. Maura and Calvin moved back to the States in 1996.

Rob Lewis is a veteran speechwriter and strategic communications advisor. He currently writes for the Chairman and CEO of IBM. As Assistant Commissioner at the NYPD from 2002-2014, he served as chief speechwriter to two New York City Police Commissioners. He was also Special Advisor and chief speechwriter to the Commissioner of the U.S. Customs Service in Washington, D.C. from 1999-2002. Prior to these roles, he was External Relations Manager at Fiat U.S.A. and Special Assistant to U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. In 1993, while pursuing his master’s degree at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Rob completed a summer internship at the U.S. Embassy in Prague. He was assigned to the Economics Section, where he researched and wrote diplomatic cables on various economic issues related to the Czech Republic’s post-communist transition, including the so-called voucher privatization. This experience served as the basis for a thesis paper he subsequently wrote on challenges to the privatization of large Czech industries.
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Thank you, Eva Giannone, for her amazing pastries! https://www.facebook.com/cookiesbyevanyc/

Monday, MARCH 15, 2019 at 7 pm
Bohemian National Hall,
321 E 73rd St, New York City

Standing ovations for the fifteen-year old piano prodigy from Prague after his brilliant performance of works by Beethoven, Chopin, Novák and Rachmaninov.

PHOTOS by (c) Suzanna Halsey

PROGRAM (Subject to a change)
Beethoven: Sonata in A major op. 2 no. 2
Allegro vivace
Largo appassionato
Scherzo: Allegretto
Rondo: Grazioso
Chopin: Waltz in A-flat major op. 34 no. 1
Nocturne C-sharp Minor, op. Posth
Ballade in F major no. 2 op. 38
Novák Memories: Inquietto
Rachmaninov Preludes op. 23 no. 4, 5

VIDEO from his repeat performance on March 17 at the Millenium Stage at the Kennedy Center

Jan Cmejla (born in 2003) has played the piano since the age of six and studied composition since the age of eight. Since 2018, he has been studying at the Prague Conservatory under Prof. Eva Boguniová. Jan is a winner of some of the most acclaimed piano competitions and performed in prestigious concert halls at home and abroad. His numerous successes include the top prize at the 2014 AMADEUS international competition for pianists under 11 years old; being one of ten participants selected from 300 candidates from 49 countries for the prestigious Allianz Junior Music Camp 2015 in Vienna, organized by Lang Lang International Music Foundation; and the 1st prize at the 2018 International Competition Virtuosi per Musica di Pianoforte. In 2019, he also added the first place at the Concertino Praga international music competition for young talented musicians.

In cooperation with the Consulate General of the Czech Republic in New York and the Czech Embassy in Washington, DC and with support of the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association (BBLA)

Wednesday, MARCH 27 at 7pm
Bohemian National Hall, 3rd.floor
321 E 73 St. NYC

Czech and Slovak artists, professionals, students, and scholars are challenged to introduce the subject of their project, research or studies in a short presentation limited to six minutes. In English.

PROGRAM NOTES

PHOTOS

Moderated by Christopher Harwood, Ph.D., Columbia University

Presenters: Jakub Lajmon (aerospace software), Martin Rybár (nuclear physics), Silvia Fishbaum (Jewish history), Jan Remšík (oncology), Maya Harsaniová (author Exit Havana), Katerina Vráblíková (social studies), Hana Císarová Shannon (visual arts), and and Branislav “Brano” Brinarský (music). (music).

Organized by the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences, New York Chapter in cooperation with the Consulate General of the Slovak Republic

Thursday, MARCH 7, 2019 at 7pm

PHOTOS FROM THE EVENT

A screening of award-winning short films made by three brilliant Czech women filmmakers living in New York City:
Marie Dvoráková, Bára Jíchová Tyson and Zuzka Kurtz. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers.

MARIE DVORÁKOVÁ , director and writer, born in Jablonec nad Nisou, is a graduate of the Prague Film School, (FAMU) and holds a master’s degree in film directing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her narrative and documentary shorts have screened and received awards at different film festivals worldwide. She currently serves as director of programming at the Czech Center in New York. She is the winner of the Student Oscar prize (with the short film Who’s Who in Mycology, 2017 – presented tonight) being just the second Czech to win it after Jan Sverák in 1989. She is also the recipient of the 2011 Spike Lee Production Fund Award. In 2010, she received the 16th Annual Student Filmmaker Award by the Director’s Guild of America (Steenbeckstory), and grants from the Sloan Film Production and the Jerome Foundation. Her work was shortlisted for the AICP Awards in New York and for the 2010 Cannes Young Director Award. Her current project is a documentary film about NY- based Czech photographer Marie Tomanova.

BÁRA JÍCHOVÁ TYSON is a filmmaker, photographer and artist from Ceské Budejovice in the Czech Republic. She is a 2016 recipient of The MacDowell Colony fellowship. Her short documentary film The Hatch House (presented tonight) was selected for the 2016 ADFF in NYC and the American Documentary Film Festival in Palm Springs in 2016. She has been exhibiting her 2D work and photography in solo and group shows including at the Greene Naftali Gallery, Salon Ciel, BBLA and Pocket Utopia. Bara was the art director of Now, Forager, a feature film by J. Cortlund and J. Halperin, which was a nominated for a Gotham Independent Film Award in 2012. Her most recent film Organ Player, was selected for Sundance Film Festival 2018. She has just finished her first feature film Talking About Adultery. The film was invited to 2016 DocuWork-In-Progress Lab at DCTV in NYC and is currently being considered by major documentary film festivals.

ZUZKA KURTZ is a Prague born multi-media artist and filmmaker residing in NYC. She wrote and directed the Off-Broadway dance and puppetry performance My Inner Sole, 2010 and a collection of nine short films 7 Ways 2 Skin a Cat, 2013, screened at Anthology Film Archives in NYC. Her first short documentary Blade #1, shot in Brooklyn NY and produced in collaboration with Geoffrey Hug, was awarded the Best Short Documentary at The Art of Brooklyn Film Festival, NYLA International Film Festival, Spotlight Film Awards and at the Atlanta DocuFest, and screened internationally at a variety of film festivals and PBS. Zuzka produced and directed mini shorts Eat Something and The Seamstress, 2015, both winners of Best Shorts at the Int’l Film Festivals in Milan and Rome, and Multi Species Family, 2016. Currently, she is producing a four-year documentary film The Hudson Project Documentary with Geoff Hug, to be released in 2021.

An illustrated talk by Edward Kasinec, Hoover Institution, and Harriman Institute, with Hee Gwone Yoo, New York Public Library

Tue, December 11 at 7:00 pm
at Bohemian National Hall
321 E 73 St, 3rd Fl., NYC

RSVP

Free. Suggested donation $5.00
Light refreshments.

Recent years have witnessed the discovery of several photographic sources dealing with Sub-Carpathian Rus’ in the years 1919-1923, shortly after its incorporation into the Czechoslovak State. These sources range from the color photography by Rudolf H?lka (1887-l961), the architectural images of Florian Zapletal (1884-l969), and the photos and photogravures of the Russian émigré writer Nikolai P. Malitskii (1883-l963), newly uncovered in the archives of the Foundation for Russian History, Jordanville, New York.

Lev Sixta, Vološanka, A Rusyn Man

Edward Kasinec’s presentation places in historical context two stunning albums acquired in 2017 by curator Robert H. Davis, Jr. for the Rare Books and Manuscript Library of the Columbia University Libraries. The first was prepared in 1919-1920 by the Prague-based Czech educator and local historian Václav Sixta (1862-1935) and his photographer son, Lev. The second album was orchestrated from a national ministry in Prague, most likely by the Foreign Ministry, or the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The title leaf in nine languages (!) expresses the gratitude of the “freed” populations of Sub Carpathian Rus’ to their Czechoslovak liberators.
The speaker will reflect on the political motivations and timing of both the Sixtas and the Czechoslovak Ministry in preparing these albums.

Edward Kasinec holds graduate degrees and certificates from Columbia University (M.A., 1968, M.Phil., 1979), Simmons College (M.L.S., 1976), and New York University (Appraisal Studies, 2010). In 1971-1972, he studied at the Moscow State University. His career includes service as Reference Librarian/Archivist for the Harvard University’s Ukrainian Research Institute Library (1973-80); Librarian for Slavic Collections, University of California, Berkeley, Library (1980-84); and Curator, Slavic and Baltic Division, The New York Public Library (1984-2009). He presently serves as a Research Associate, Harriman Institute, Columbia University and, since 2014, Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

Hee-Gwone Yoo is Senior Librarian and Slavic Collections Specialist at the General Humanities Division of Schwarzman Building, The New York Public Library. He received his MA and MLS from Queens College, CUNY. As a librarian, he has a particular interest in visual resources, rare books, and exhibitions and outreach. He has participated in numerous conferences, domestic and international, and is the co-author of the award-winning Visual Resources from Russia and Eastern Europe in The New York Public Library: A Checklist, in 2008, and several articles.

Organized by Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences with the support of the Consulate General of the Slovak Republic in New York and Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association (BBLA).

The Ninth 6-Minute Challenge
Wed, November 28, 2018, at 7:00 pm
at Bohemian National Hall, 3rd floor
321 E 73 St, NYC

Czech and Slovak artists, professionals, students, and scholars are challenged to introduce the subject of their project, research or studies in a short presentation limited to six minutes. In English.

PROGRAM NOTES

PHOTOS

VIDEO

Moderated by Christopher Harwood, Ph.D., Columbia University

Presenters: Vojta Ciml (software SlidesLive developer), Vladimír Dzuroo (UN Chief investigator), Martin Gajdošík (post-doc research scientist in neuroscience, Columbia U.), Štepánka Horálková-Summer (ceramic artist / author), Roman Huszar (PhD candidate in neuroscience, NYU), Tom Kotik (sculptor/ curator/ musician), Ján Pecarka (visual artist), and Marie Tomanová (photographer).

Organized by Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU) with support by the Consulate General of the Slovak Republic in New York

Saturday, October 6 and Sunday, October 7, 2018
11:30 am – 9 pm
Bohemian National Hall
321 E 73 St, NYC

The two-day festival celebrates the traditional folk arts and two auspicious anniversaries: the Centennial of the founding of Czechoslovakia (1918) and the Millennial of the unification of the Lands of the Czech Crown, under Duke Oldrich (1018).

Events include marionette theater performances, folk music concerts with Czech, Slovak, Moravian, Silesian, Roma and Rusyn folk songs (Feels Like Home), and folk song-inspired performances (A Tribute to the Art of the Folk Song), traditional folk dance and costume kroje presentations, film screenings, a sing-along and more.

The festival will feature the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre (CAMT) in the US Premiere of the mainstage marionette production, “Duke Oldrich & Washerwoman Božena: The True Story,” and a one-man family marionette show of Czech and Slovak fairy tales; and a USA debut concert of Beata Bocek, the talented Czech Polish folk singer and musician performing on a variety of instruments and in a variety of languages. She will also be performing in the main marionette production.

A market will offer Czech and Slovak arts and crafts, puppets and an array of traditional Czech foods and beverages.
(Vendors please register by Oct 1, 2018. One table fee $75/day)

Tickets prices vary from suggested donation to $38(2-day pass)
RSVPs are recommended.
RSVP or buy tickets ONLINE.
Tickets by phone: 1 (800) 838-3006

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PROGRAM (subject to change)

SATURDAY, October 6th

11:30am WATER GOBLIN & OTHER CZECH & SLOVAK TALES (Vodník, Cert a Káca, Pejsek a Kocicka)
Vit Horejs one-man -marionette show for families. In English

1 pm STRINGS! CAMERA! AKCE! (ACTION!)
Film screenings of Animated and documentary puppetry films
Folk Arts Celebration
2 pm BLUE PATTERNS
Traditional modrotisk (indigo) textile print presentation by Petra Valentova-Gupta, followed by hands-on block-printing for families.

4pm FEELS LIKE HOME Folk Songs and Fashion
Folk songs performed by Ariana Lem Trio (Slovak and Rusyn), Petra Gelbart (Roma), James Warhola introduces recording of his grandma, Andy Warhol’s mother, Karel Smekal and Klara Zikova (Czech songs). Presentations of traditional costumes kroje by their owners and sharing of their stories. Moderated by Milada Melli-Jones.

7 pm DUKE OLDRICH and WASHER WOMAN BOŽENA
A full production of CAMT marionette theater. In English.

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SUNDAY, October 7th

11:30 am WATER GOBLIN & OTHER CZECH & SLOVAK TALES” (Vodník, Cert a Káca, Pejsek a Kocicka)
Vit Horejs one-man -marionette show for families. In English.

1 pm STRINGS! CAMERA! AKCE! (ACTION!)
Film screenings of Animated and documentary puppetry films

2:30 pm DUKE OLDRICH AND WASHERWOMAN BOŽENA
A full production of CAMT marionette theater. In English.

4pm A DANCE CLASS BY LIMBORA DANCERS
A presentation about Slovak folkdance tradition with a dance lesson for the audience.

Twin Concerts
6 pm A TRIBUTE TO THE ART OF A FOLK SONG – Artists share their favorite folk songs performed in various genres (jazz, opera, cabaret, rock). Featuring Peter Breiner, Javor Bracíc, Pavlína Horáková, Gabriela Miková-Johnson, Katarína Vizina, Ladi Šmigura, Klára Zíková English and others. Hanka G, Tomáš Kaco, a href=”http://georgemraz.com/camilla_bio.html”>Camilla Mráz and Ester Wiesnerova via video. Moderated by Pavlína Horaková
7pm BEATA BOCEK in CONCERT – US Premier
A popular multitalented Czech-Polish folk singer and musician (guitar, flute, accordion). Bocek will perform traditional and not so traditional music, including an array of songs in Polish, Czech and invented languages.

The festival is produced by GOH Productions in cooperation with Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association (BBLA), Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU-NY), CzechMatters with support by the Czech and Slovak Consulates in New York.

Contacts:
GOH Productions/CAMT, Bonnie Stein
SVU-NY/ CzechMatters, Suzanna Halsey,
BBLA, Pavla Niklová, office@bohemianbenevolent.org

Author’s Talk: Kevin J. McNamara

Wednesday, October 24, 2018 at 7:00 pm,
3rd floor

RSVP: newyork@svu2000.org
Free. Suggested donation $5.00

Mr. McNamara will introduce his comprehensive account of the highly dramatic events that led to the founding of Czecho-Slovakia in 1918. The story involves an ad hoc army of ex-POWs that inadvertently seized all of Siberia, global espionage, high-stakes diplomacy, and America’s own Czechs and Slovaks, who raised funds and pressured President Woodrow Wilson to grant their peoples independence.

Kevin J. McNamara, a former journalist, bureau chief, and U.S. congressional aide, is an associate scholar of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Philadelphia, PA, and a former contributing editor of Orbis, its quarterly journal of world affairs.

Monday, October 15, 2018 at 7:00 pm
at Bohemian National Hall
321 E 73 St, New York City

A Talk and Exhibition

There were more than 50,000 Czechs and Slovaks living in New York City in the early 20th century and they continue to have a presence today.
The exhibition Czech and Slovak New York 1848-2018 offers a rare opportunity to explore the many locations in New York City with connections to Czech and Slovak history, and to recall important personalities, organizations and periodicals.
Martin Nekola, the curator of the exhibition, will take us on a journey through history of New York’s Czech and Slovak communities, and present his new project.

RSVP: newyork@svu2000.org
Free. Suggested donation $5.00

Martin Nekola, Ph.D. is a political scientist and historian, born in Prague. He studied at Charles University in Prague and was a Fulbright post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University. His research focuses on the Czechoslovak Exile community after 1948 and Czech communities in the USA. He is the author of three hundred articles and has published ten books in the past ten years. Since publishing Czech Chicago in 2017, he has been working on a new book – Czech New York.

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association (BBLA).

Thursday, September 20, 2018, at 7 pm

Bohemian National Hall, 3rd fl.
321 E 73 St, New York City

RSVP
Free. Suggested donation $5.00

Illustrated presentations by Meghan Forbes, Ph.D., and the artist Gabriel Levicky. Organized as a part of the centennial celebration of the founding of Czechoslovakia in 1918.

In the period between the two World Wars, various artistic and poetic strategies in Europe reflected the absurdity of recent violence and optimism for a more utopic future. In this brief window of openness on the continent, artists and ideas moved and mingled, and movements like Dada and Surrealism spread from one major city to another. Prague was a capital of these interactions and exchanges, and the Czech leftist avant-garde participated notably in the art production of the period. Encounters with visiting Dadaists in the early 1920s from Germany and Yugoslavia, and the formation of a group of Czech Surrealists in the mid-1930’s, mark but a couple of such examples.
The evening is dedicated to the legacy of this rich art historical past, as Meghan Forbes offers an overview of some manifestations of Czech Dada and Surrealism in the work of Karel Teige, Vítezslav Nezval, Jindrich Štyrský and Toyen, and the Slovak artist Gabriel Levicky presents his collage works Gablevages that carry the surrealist DNA. Moderated by Christopher Harwood, Ph.D., Columbia University, with a Q&A to follow.

Meghan Forbes is the C-MAP Fellow for Central and Eastern Europe at The Museum of Modern Art, New York and a Visiting Scholar at NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, where she completed a dissertation titled “In the Middle of It All: Prague, Brno, and the Avant-Garde Networks of Interwar Europe.” Meghan has received numerous grants and fellowships for her research, including an IIE Fulbright award for the 2015-2016 academic year. Her translations from the Czech and Slovak, book and exhibition reviews, and essays have appeared in publications such as Um?ní/Art, post at MoMA, Hyperallergic, Words Without Borders, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Literary Hub, and she is the sole editor of the volume, International Perspectives on Publishing Platforms: Image, Object, Text, forthcoming in early 2019 from Routledge. Meghan is also founder and co-editor of the not-for-profit small press imprint harlequin creature.

Gabriel Ariel Levicky, GabLev ’18 is an artist, poet, translator and NYC tour guide. His cartoons, poetry, and collages gablevages reflect a strong DaDa/Surreal influence, employing humor, sarcasm and self-mocking. Born in Humenne, Eastern Slovakia, he studied in Bratislava where he joined a dissident group opposing the communist regime and signed the Charter 77. Until 1979, his work was published in Czechoslovak and international magazines and newspapers. Later as a result of increasing persecution by the STB secret police, he was forced to leave Czechoslovakia. Before settling in New York, he lived in California where he earned his BA in international relations at San Francisco State University.

Wednesday, AUGUST 15 at 7pm
Bohemian National Hall, cinema
321 E 73 St, New York City

PHOTOS FROM THE EVENT

A special screening of a Czech docudrama offering insight into the disquietingly unconflicted mind of a man who built his career on rationalizing mass killings. As a collaborator with Stalin’s secret police, Karel Vaš, oversaw the butchery of more than 1,000 German civilians. As a judge in the infamous show trials after 1948 communist coup in Czechoslovakia, he dispensed death sentences to opponents of the regime based on fabricated evidence. While his actions caused many deaths he lived to be 97!! He was the cruelest communist killer ever to speak on camera about his career. (2014, 52 min. In English )
The filmmaker and historian Pavel Palecek was present to introduce his film.

In cooperation with the Consulate General of the Czech Republic in New York.

Pavel Palecek (1977) earned his Ph.D. in modern history and studied at the University of Vienna, Columbia University of New York and Masaryk University in Brno. He is the author of five history books and several award-winning documentaries on WWII and Cold War history. He is also a founder of the Cold War Museum “10-Z Bunker” in Brno (www.10-Z.cz).

Tuesday, August 21, 2018 at 8:00pm
at Bohemian National Hall, 3rd fl.
321 E 73 St, New York City

An opening of two exhibitions, “Remembering Alexander Dubcek” and “The Story of an Image: Bare-Chested Man in Front of a Tank,” accompanied by a screening of the documentary film Dubcek 70 (Sedemdesiatnik Alexander Dub?ek, 24 min., 1991, English subtitles). In the interview, made one year before his tragic death, the 70-year old Alexander Dubcek reflects on events that affected his personal journey as one of the protagonists of the “Prague Spring.”

Where were you on Aug 21, 1968? Come to share your memory for our oral history video project!

Organized in cooperation with the Consulate General of the Slovak Republic in New York and with the support of the Consulate general of the Czech Republic.

RSVP: newyork@svu2000.org
Free and open to the public.
Suggested donation $5.00

This is a joint event with the Czech Center. Its program will start at 7pm.
A light wine and beer reception will follow the screening on the 3rd fl.

Photo (c)Ladislav Bielik