Czech radio

Almost every radio person has had a dream of being a presenter. Does Eliška Soukupová have them too? “Yes, sometimes I even tame the dragon in them. My biggest nightmare is that I come to the studio, not knowing that I have an interview and not being prepared for it. Or I come to the theater and have a performance, which I haven’t even read.“

It was only on the radio that I found out what I couldn’t do

On Radio Wave, she hosted the series After the Footsteps of Days. “It’s about dreams, sleep, human dreaming and, from a historical perspective, about collective dreaming. I conduct interviews with experts or people with interesting personalities.” Eliška Soukupová’s other program is the hotcast Pot. It is broadcast only after 10 p.m. “It’s about intimacy, sexuality and relationships.”

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Eliška Soukupová hosted for the first time at the age of 19. “I thought what a presenter I am. I can pronounce, breathe properly and I’m nice. Then I came to the Czech Radio’s elementary school program. I found out what I still have to learn, find out how research is done, how to prepare, write an article for the website, edit a show. I’m still learning.”

Too expressive and not enough subtle?

Eliška Soukupová graduated from the acting conservatory, but was not accepted at DAMU. And the reason? They say it is too expressive and not very subtle. “So we made our own file called Turkey Meat. We’ve had him for eight years.’

She shot Hello, Welcome at the International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary. “We had to do everything during the festival, because of us it would not be extended by three days. The film contains our experiences and fragments from Vary, when we were there with another film. We bet a lot on the festival atmosphere, and it paid off.”

Medicine has always fascinated her. Even more so when she had direct experience with the disease that took her husband. “But I’m not doing the Moci without illness show just to remember him. It is also a thank you to the doctors and a warning to everyone that prevention pays off,” appeals moderator Šárka Volemanová. How does he remember the difficult period? Why did hope never leave her? Will she be able to surprise her in her work as a presenter? And how far along is he with writing his new book?

“I met my husband as an oncology patient. He had a very unusual oncological disease, which no one really knew how to deal with. That’s when I understood that the most difficult thing is to find the right doctor, treatment options and hope for life,” recalls Šárka Volemanová, author of the radio program Moci bez nemoči, which focuses on news in treatment, about the turning point.

You can’t do it without hope

Over time, her husband’s illness brought her to the Institute of Oncology, for which she subsequently worked as the head of the PR department and press spokesperson. “For four years, I completely left the presenting profession. But I never regretted it. I met people there who, regardless of anything, always helped with the same intensity. Like Mr. Prime Minister Vydra. That’s when my interest in medicine grew even more,” says the presenter, whose discussion show Áčko on Nova TV became a legend.

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“People associated my face with the show a lot back then. And since it was a program where people went to tell their stories, they wanted to share them with me at the Institute of Oncology. It was very difficult because I used to go to work there and it happened that I didn’t see some of them in the morning because they died in the palliative care unit. And then I came home in the evening, where I had my troubles. My husband’s cancer has returned six times in ten years. That’s why I had to end there. The sadness was too much for me.’

Nevertheless, with hindsight, he agrees that oncology is actually a very optimistic field. “It is one of the most developing fields. There is the most news and the most options, which gives people a lot of hope. Life would not be possible without it, and that is why it is important that we do not take hope away from people, because then hopelessness comes. Fortunately, we have an incredible number of doctors in the Czech Republic who know how to give hope…,” added Šárka Volemanová for Close Encounters.

Right from the start, Aleš called for Jaws to donate his kidneys. While his, Vítka’s and Tomák’s organs were functioning at a few percent during the broadcast, the jaws were going full throttle. With the cucumber season, the trio dealt not only with an excited debate about Dalibor Janda’s cucumbers, but Tomák also saw a new version of the film The Crow. It was a much worse sight.

“There are quite a lot of Czech actors playing there, because it was filmed in Prague, and that’s about the only quality that can be talked about,” Tomák recapitulates the shocking experience given to him by director Rupert Sanders, who after thirty years filmed a new version of The Crow, the cult dark film by Alex Proyas based on the comic by James O’Barr. “The creators added more romance, more mythology around the hero who rose from the dead, and more bloody carnage to the original straightforward story of love, death and revenge. But they only caused the work to appear ridiculous.’

Video of The Crow (2024) Official Trailer – Bill Skarsgård, FKA twigs, Danny Huston

And so the only appropriately childish pleasure for Tomák could have been watching Czech actors die a violent death. Karel Dobrý, in a medium-sized role, first kills a lot, then is escorted out of the world accompanied by his typical grimaces (all the better). The hero of jaw samples of recent times, the author of the already classic saying “Someone here farted.” Jan Budař, as usual, doesn’t look like anything. “And then he dies a beautiful death, stabbed in the head,” Tomák dreams for a moment about the only scene that slightly moved him in an otherwise completely useless film.

Who will the Egyptian drama send Hajj what the heck? Is John Woo still the same? Killer? It was more Unheard of to kill Aira McNairaor how college football signal-stealing? A puma appeared in Litvínov that no one knows. In Brno, the temptations have spilled out.

The surroundings of the Ostrava studio of the Czech Radio spontaneously came alive with the songs of Karel Kryl. Musicians with guitars in hand reminded people of the anniversary of the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops. The legendary bar U Waldemara organized an event called ‘Go home, Ivan’, and Kryl’s songs were also played in front of his statue, which decorates the corner in front of the radio.

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The 58-year-old singer-songwriter Jiří Beránek recalls the invasion in an original way right in front of the Ostrava radio building. “It’s from the heart. I told myself that I simply have to be here, even if it rains,” he says, sitting on a stool right next to the statue of Karel Kryl. “Actually, thanks to Karl Kryl, I learned to write and compose songs,” he adds.

Right across the street is the legendary U Waldemara bar, where Karel Kryl liked to go. And here, too, the occupation was remembered. “Here goes history. Karel Kryl used to come here when he was filming Bratříček. These are the things that are stamped here somewhere. The energy is here somewhere,” bar owner Přemysl Bureš looks around.

Ostrava in August 1968|photo: Ivan Sláma

“Tanks of the then Warsaw Pact also arrived here, that is, Russian tanks. So I see no reason not to remember the occupation. On the contrary. These days we know that the war is just around the corner,” adds Bureš.

Ostrava was occupied by a division called Železná. There was even no mining in a part of the coalfield for a few days.

I studied, Tomáš, what you did in your life, and I found one remarkable sentence: “Tomáš Měcháček was, among other things, at the birth of the movement of the mind for theatrical research Matapa.” Was that theater?

Well, just because it wasn’t quite a play, that’s why I came up with this great name. It was an invisible theater in the streets.

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Now it’s called mob acting or pranking, but we ran around Prague many, many years ago as part of the promotion of Zlomvaz, which is a theater school festival at DAMU, and there were about ten of us in prison uniforms at the law faculty.

A beautiful girl dressed as a policewoman was guarding us and we just walked and there were cobblestones and we kind of just started passing them around. There was a jam, people were watching and they were like, “Yeah, that’s how it works now.” And they don’t know that it’s theater until they get it, maybe at the end, which it should. Otherwise, it’s basically a simple manipulation.

There were three Tominis – long, wide and me. And we weren’t even dancers, but we got the third prize.