• Of Best Intentions – A movie from Ireland. It was a story about five people, whose best intentions had disastrous consequences. They introduced us all 5 characters very quickly and then led them all together in one big smash. The camera and music, the whole atmoshpere of the movie was so cool. Loved it.                                                                                                                                                           
• Edward´s Turmoil – a movie about 13 years old boy who gets kind of an epilepsy attack every time someone around him says a swear word. He´s stuck with his foul mouthed grandpa for a day and he forces him to swear. It has a pretty funny and morbid end. Loved this short movie.                                                                                              
• City Paradise – this one was half animated and half acted. Very interesting atmosphere. It´s about a Japan girl who arrives to London to learn english. She accidentally discovers a mysterious, secret underground city, inhabited by friendly little aliens.                                                                                                                                                                                                       
• Caporal Crevette – a movie about a boy who played with his soldiers toys really believing it´s the real thing. The courageous Caporal Crevette is parachuted in the middle of the jungle to carry out a vital and extremely dangerous mission – take control of a fiercely defended Soviet stronghold.                                                                                                                                                                                            
• Instead of Abracadabra – this one was hilarious sweden movie about a loser magician in his 20s who lives with his parents and who always injures his volunteers. I think this movie was the longest. It ended with a big magician show at his father 60th birthday party and the parents are afraid who he will injure now. Very funny.                                                                                                      
• King Crab Attack – this one was drawn as a hollywood trailer, full of cliches and exaggeration. How the hero saves the world from mutated king crabs. Funny.

Before a big schism at my work my boss asked me to accompany him to the two different evening events. I´m not paid for it and it means to be at work from the morning till the night but I like it. It means to see some new different things. The things you only read about or see on TV so it is interesting.

The First thing he asked me to attend was an opening of exhibition about czech filmmaker Karel Zeman in the honor of the upcoming 50^th International Film Festival for Children and Youth in Zlín. The opening was held in Hybernia Theater and the event was attended by 150 guests, including some czech celebrities which was kind of exciting. Since the festival takes place in Moravia we were treated some moravian goodies to eat and drink, such as good wine and cakes.
There were given some speeches at the beginning, including one of my boss. Then there was a song from upcoming czech musical Baron Munchausen sung. We stayed for like a 3 hours, just mingling and drinking wine. I should improve my chit-chatting abilities. I´m not good at talking about nothing to people I don´t know.

The second event was a concert in occasion of 18th anniversary of independence of Kazakhstan.  My boss was invited by the Embassy of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The concert was held in Rudolfinum, which is czech main concert hall (the home of Czech philharmonic orchestra) so I had to dress up a lot. I so need a new wardrobe for events like this.

The concert was played by Kazakh state chamber orchestra “Academy of soloists” conducted by Marius Stravinsky. The main artists was  violinist Aiman Musahodzhayeva. They played world classic music as well as some Kazakhstan music.

After the concert there was a big party with lots of fancy food. I don´t care about fancy food, caviar and such so I found myself a cake table. The tiny cakes were delicious. There were lots of politicians and businessmen everywhere. Even a head of our Parliament, Mr. Vlcek, was there. He was giving a speech and then he chatted with my boss for a while so I shook my hand with him. Cool. My boss knew a lot of people there so we were constantly greeting someone. One guy asked me if I was my boss´girlfriend.lol My boss was in quite a good mood so it was a nice evening.

Everything is different now, though. I have a new office, new responsibilities. Even though I have the same boss I don´t think he´ll ask me to go somewhere with him anytime soon. Just when I bought a new dress...

 The Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic organized a Forum for Creative Europe conference as a part of the Czech Presidency of the Council of the European Union. The conference was one of the main events of the European Year of Creativity and Innovation 2009 and it took place in the Municipal Library of Prague from 26th to 27th March 2009.
There was a official opening ceremony on Wednesday evening and my boss asked me to accompany him and translate for him if needed. That made me little nervous cos my english speaking abilities – not really good. Luckily I wasn´t that needed at the end. I don´t want to go into details about the event cos I work in public office and I don´t want czech people to read about behind the stuff. The ceremony was held in the Museum of Music and the place looked gorgeous, lots of good food too. There was a demonstration going on right in front of the building which wasn´t looking too good for international guests. There were ministers and governmental delegations from lots of countries and they had to lead them in by backdoor. The demonstrators were protesting against Ministry of Culture of Czech rep. cos they are giving less money for culture activities this year. I guess some people didn´t realized that it´s crisis now and so everyone has to held back. But you just can´t explain it to people, they don´t listen. When czech minister was giving a speech on the podium the demonstrators started to pound into windows and made a noise. Would like to hear what the guests were thinking about it.

 You can see clip about the opening here.

 Also my boss asked me to follow him to the first day of Forum and I had a blast. We sat in the auditorium and listened to many opening speeches, our minister, ministers of culture of France and Sweden and then Václav Havel came on stage. I really admire him so It was honor for me to be able to sit there and listen to his speech about cutlure. He was in hospital last month and his conditions were serious, so he talked kind of slow and looked thin but he made some really good points. I really liked his speech. Tomáš Sedláček was next, he´s chief of macroeconomic strategist of ČSOB and member of the National Economic Council of the Government and his speech was kind of funny. My favorite. He´s funny guy.

Václav Havel and his "Facing a Cathedral" speech

 Tomáš Sedláček and his speech "What Makes the Wealth of Nations"

The afternoon program was called „The experts´perspectives“. The panel was supposed to offer evidence of the contribution of arts and culture to prosperity of nations. The experts were all very good speakers, interesting, entertaining. I wish I could speak like them. The experts I liked the most were David Throsby, professor of Economics, Macquarie University in Sydney and John Howkins, Vice Dean of Shangai School of Creativity and Visiting Professor at Lincoln University, UK. It was fun to hear british, american and australian english accent in one hour. Haha.

And later there was a hour long live telecast from Toronto with Richard Florida, Director, Martin Prosperity Institute, Professor of Business and Creativity, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. His speech was really interesting, he sure got into the moment. You can read about him on Wiki, really interesting guy. He talked about his new book he´s writing now, called Great reset, about the current crisis, about how we all will have to press a reset button and start all over, although not from the beginning and how creativity should help us lead the way.

It was a great day, just hanging around, listening to all these interesting thoughts. I felt like back in school again, especially with my schoolmates there. Im sad I couldn´t go back on Friday when the topics were more practical than theoretical, though.


Here´s an official site of the forum
www.forumforcreativeeurope.cz/br /

So Monday was an interesting day. On Friday afternoon my boss came to my office and just randomly said that he might will need me to go to theatre award ceremony on Monday evening in Pardubice (1,5 hour far from Prague) with him. That was for the first time. He said that he will need someone to take care of things there so he won´t  have to bother with anything. He´s usually very self-sustaining, plus he was there last year so there wasn´t anything what could surprise him. I didn´t really feel like going at first cos the image of me and my boss in a car together for hour and half wasn´t really appealing, what could we possibly chat about ? But I went and it was surprisingly good. Plus I felt important in his official car with black windows and a driver. Haha. There´s a big festival of comedy theatre in Pardubice every year, called Grand Festival of Laughter. We arrived to the theatre a hour before the show and they took us to the theatre manager´s office, we chatted with him and it felt quite official. My boss was supposed to present one of the awards so the manager explained him where to go and told us where our seats are. The manager was really nice. He told us he planned a trip to New York for his ensemble. Isn´t it great? They will have it as a study trip and will visit Broadway theatres. Sigh. I wish someone would pay it for me too. A half a hour before the show politicians and sponsors of the festival began to fill the managers office. I shook hand with some important people - major of Pardubice, county marshal, senators and so on. Then it was time for the ceremony to begin. They were taping it for TV. I sat in the first row dead center. But I didn´t see myself in a mirror since Prague so I was nervous about my look and hoped that my hair looked at least somewhat decent. The winners sat on my right side and presenters on my left side so the camera was there the whole time. Sigh. The ceremony wasn´t too long, just about a hour and something. The host was one popular czech comic actor, Josef Dvořák and he was good, it didn´t feel forced. He co-hosted with two young actress from Pardubice theatre and they were pretty good too. They put scenes from A Flea in Her Ear by Georges Feydeau in between the presenting and I like the play so it was funny. There was also a band and the co-hosting girls were singing songs from 30s. It sounded great. Theatre from Mladá Boleslav won a best comedy award for a czech play Men in Offside by Karel Poláček. The audience chose a Complete work of William Shakespeare by Theatre in Long street as a best comedy (the show I posted about here two weeks ago), they also won and award for a best actor. The manager of the theatre was sitting right next to me so yay, more screen time.lol

After the ceremony there was a food and wine in a foyer. So I tried to small-talk. I´m really not good at it. It´s really hard for me to act interested in stories of people I don´t know. It always seem so frivolous to me. I talked to manager of the winning theatre and we are invited to Mladá Boleslav to see the show. That would be cool. One guy from my Uni was there, he was accepting the award for the best comedy. I never talked to him in school, he was older than me but apparently I was familiar to him too so we chatted and suddenly another actor from JAMU came. He was in class with my roommate so I remembered him well. Small world.

Luckily my boss didn´t want to stay long so we left after a half  a hour. I got home at midnight. It was really long day. We went right after work so there wasn´t really a time to chill. Well, I enjoyed the day and that´s what really matters.