The last weekend of the holiday season will see Brno hosting the 3rd international festival of Jewish culture. The festival will feature some important and lesser-known artists such as Franz Kafka, Hugo and Pavel Haas, Ernst Wiesner, Arnold Schöenberg, Helga Hošková, conductor Alexander Liebreich, photographer Jindřich Štreit and Petr Bureš, and will give an insight into their life stories. The programme will offer more than 110 diverse attractions, more than 50 personalities and ensembles from the Czech Republic and abroad, and many kilometres of walks to explore some notable places and find out more about prominent figures from the Jewish community in Brno. ŠTETL FEST is the Czech Republic’s largest festival of Jewish culture.
The leitmotif of the third annual festival will be Jewish trauma and its transformation into an art form - literary, artistic and musical. This festival theme is entitled Jewish Trauma in Art, from Kafka to Barbie, and contains a number of challenges: above all, an attempt to put a name to the Jewish trauma, get it across to the next generation, and highlight the reason or need to transform it into a form of artistic expression. An effort to describe the historical development and to explore how Jewish trauma is reflected in the lives of individuals, communities and families in contemporary society.
"The Jewish Community of Brno and the ŠTETL association are jointly organising ŠTETL FEST, the third annual international festival of Jewish culture. The theme of this year's festival is Jewish Trauma in Art, from Kafka to Barbie. We believe that the festival will thus build on the previous two years, especially with the appeal of the individual exhibitions, talks, concerts and performances. We are designing the festival to appeal to visitors who came from all over the world, but also to reflect the feedback in the media, which showered it with praise. One of the highlights of this year's event will be the evaluation of an art competition, the theme of which was to complete the missing card for Black Peter, a card game painted for children in the Terezín ghetto during the Holocaust. These cards will be exhibited together with drawings by Petr Haimann from the time when he was a child in the Terezín ghetto," said Jáchym Kanarek, chairman of the Jewish Community of Brno. Each year, the festival programmers strive to find themes that reflect contemporary society and the situation around the world. Jewish themes, culture and traditions remain the main focus. But above all, also the connection and links to the world around them. This year, the festival will take place across an extended four days, from 29 August to 1 September at traditional and new venues associated with Jewish culture in Brno.
The organisers have also paid tribute to two anniversaries of the Brno composer Pavel Haas - 125 years since his birth and 80 years since his death. Musicologist Ondřej Pivoda, who has long studied Haas and his work, will assist in the creation of an educational programme - with lectures and walks through places that influenced and inspired the composer. Three artists from JAMU, Jan Doležel, Justina Grecová and Jana Vaverková, will stage a production of Noir Haas, about the relationship and fate of the two Haas brothers in collaboration with the Goose on a String Theatre. Pavel Haas' work will also be performed during the festival's closing concert. The Brno Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Alexander Liebreich, will perform his Study for Strings and Suite for Oboe and Piano, Op. 17. The concert will also feature the work of Arnold Schönberg and a talk by Miloš Štědroň on an international event connected with the composer that took place in Brno.
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