The ČT art program will remain focused on Czech culture

Prague - Czech Television (ČT) will continue to reflect on Czech culture in the upcoming autumn season on the ČT art channel. It will offer portraits of significant domestic personalities from the artistic scene as well as studies of phenomena such as revival bands, Czech pop, amateur film, regional theaters, or the Prague Studio Ypsilon. In the past three years of the channel's existence, two-thirds of its programming has consisted of original shows produced by Czech Television, said ČT Director Petr Dvořák to journalists today.

Today, ČT will celebrate the third birthday of its cultural channel with a live broadcast of the performance "Prague of a Hundred Towers" by Studio Ypsilon, which was first presented in May 2000. "During the first rehearsals, we were skeptical; it seemed like a performance for children. But in front of an audience, it received an incredible boost. It is not a dramatic form like a play, but actually a kind of symposium about Prague," said actor Jiří Lábus, a member of Ypsilon since 1972.

The live broadcast of this successful production will preview one of the novelties of the autumn program on ČT art, which will be the series "Legend of Studio Ypsilon." The project "Year of Regional Theaters" will present 13 exceptional performances created outside of Prague. These will be complemented by documentary portraits of individual theaters.

Serious music will be represented, among other things, by the second series of the documentary series "My Attempt at a Masterpiece." Directed by Alice Nellis, Olga Špátová, Erika Hniková, and others, it will focus on domestic musical personalities like countertenor Jan Mikulášek, pianist Ivo Kahánek, or harpist Jana Boušková.

Popular music will be featured in a ten-part series about the group Olympic and a series of its commemorative concerts in Malostranská beseda, a concert for the anniversary of the Porta festival 50, or a documentary about the history of the Golden Lyra festival. The popular music scene will be explored by the show "PopStory," and the phenomenon of revival bands will be addressed in the documentary by director Šimon Šafránek "Land of Revivals."

Documentary film by Jana Chytilová "Journeys of Josef Pleskot" will become the first in a planned series of documentaries about contemporary Czech architecture on ČT art. ČT art will also feature a compilation documentary "Courage" about the realization of one of the largest bronze sculptures in the world by Jaroslav Róna. The dramatic fates of the rescue of copies of some films will be recalled in the documentary series "Arsenal."

In autumn, ČT art will also present novelties from foreign productions. For example, the series "Madmen of Manhattan" will continue with a new season. The Danish series "1864," a two-part portrait of George Harrison directed by Martin Scorsese, and a four-part series about Walt Disney will also premiere on ČT screens.

The cultural channel ČT art began broadcasting on August 31, 2013. In three years, it has aired 10,950 hours, of which 68 percent was original production. Nearly a quarter of the broadcasts consisted of premieres.