The new host of the Czech Centre Michael Pospisil created a cultural oasis in Sofia

Michael Pospisil was born in 1955 in Prague, Czech Republic. At the age of three he started participating in different films. He graduated from the famous Czech Film Academy FAMU, Faculty of Documentaries direction in 1980. After that he left for France where he worked as director, producer, screenwriter, cameraman, editor and journalist for 20 years. He has made dozens of films for French and German televisions.
In 2000 he became director of the Czech Cultural Centre in Paris. He founded a jazz club and organised an international jazz festival Jazzycolors in the French capital city. He also established the Association of Foreign Cultural Institutes in France of which he has been president and vice president for years. In 2005, the French Minister of Culture awarded him the title Knight of the Order of Art and Culture.

The Czech Centre has its own place in Sofia cultural life. This spring it turned 60. Hosts, friends and guests celebrated on May 19 in the renewed Prague Gallery in an artistic atmosphere amidst paintings, music and good Czech beer. For one year and a half the space of the Czech Centre has changed radically. At first the cafО with wooden chairs and tables appeared, the Purple Lounge and the Orange Thursdays were born, and then the Saturday Jazz Evenings and the modest space at 100 Rakovski Street became a favourite place for the Sofia Boehme. The jazz concerts quickly became a tradition and since last summer the visitors of the newly opened restaurant can try Czech delicacies and real Czech beer among photographs and paintings of modern artists. The Purple Lounge has become a stage for young and classic musicians. Here the Students’ Film Festival FAMU Film Fest took place: the lovers of the seventh art could watch the latest works of the Prague Film Academy students.
The credit for these changes and rich cultural programme goes to Michael Pospisil, the charming director of the Czech Centre.

Mr. Pospisil, are 60 years a long or a short time for a cultural institution such as the Czech Centre?
For me it is very interesting to enter a building of such a long history. The comparison with the past is inevitable. The Czech Centre was established in 1949 in socialist times under the name Czechoslovakian Culture-Information Centre. It became a means for purely communist propaganda within the socialist camp. In the 60s with the advent of the Prague Spring it gained a solid reputation and became an interesting and important place for the Bulgarians. Not many cultural events were organised then but goods were sold that were deficit in Bulgaria – gramophone records, books, newspapers. They were a peculiar window to the pro-western civilization. The occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union led to the period of the so-called normalisation, the march of the communism, and the centre went to its winter sleep. After 1989 from a couple of buildings only the one at 100 Rakovski Str. remained. The new history began.

All these events pass inevitably through your mind when you come to a place like this and I have to somehow incorporate them in the further activities. There are both positive and negative things. At the celebrations of the 60th jubilee we reconstructed one of the legendary performances which have been held here, after the fairytales of Karel Capek with the participation of two actors – my great friend Itsko Fintsi and Zhorzheta Chakarova. Antoni Donchev – a child then – replaced at the piano his father the composer Kiril Donchev, author of the songs.

For seven years you have been heading the Czech Centre in Paris. Why did you choose Sofia after the end of your mandate in France?
I had many reasons to enter the competition for the post of the director of the Czech Centre in Sofia. On one hand I’d been in Paris for so long. I no longer knew what to improve there. On the other, I wanted to go a bit eastwards in Europe, my family is closely connected with Bulgaria. My grandfather Waclaw Pospisil has come to the country in 1913 with a wave of emigrants from Austro-Hungary. He started a business and began participating in the public life. He was very active in the Czech community which established itself in Bulgaria. He headed the sports organisation Sokol. He also contributed greatly to the purchasing of the Czech Club at Krakra Street which is very famous today.

My father was born in Czechia but his three sisters – in Bulgaria. Later they married Bulgarians and today here I have a living aunt at the age of 87, and some first grade cousins, who are architects, journalists.

I have my reasons to close this circle, to come here to work, to see the places where my ancestors have lived. My father, of course, spoke perfect Bulgarian. He was a graduate of the French college of St. Augustine in Plovdiv. He knew Monsignor Angelo Roncalli, the future pope John 23rd to whom he gave French language lessons. My father ran errands as a woodcarver for bishop Roncalli, for the royal palace. After college my father Ladoslav Pospisil left for Czechia where he studied architecture. He never graduated because before his last state exam the Second World War broke. He emigrated from Czechoslovakia to Greece and after many trials and persecution from the Greek police and the Gestapo he managed to enrol in the Czech part of the British army. He took part in the battle of Tobruk.

My grandfather and my grandmother are buried in the Central Sofia Cemetery, as is my second aunt.

Your life has followed some dramatic twists too. How did Paris change you?
France taught me a lot of things. This is culture in every sense of the word – literature, architecture, painting, music, culinary art. I was very happy to have had the chance of living in France for so long – 27 years. I had the chance to come to know France. On the other hand, I left the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. I always make a joke that I am a gastronomical rather than I political emigrant. I arrived in a new world where I had to adapt myself quickly. I worked as a cameraman, editor, director, producer… This was a very good school for me. In an unknown environment one understands that they have to rely on themselves alone and that no one will help them. All the people that they work with are competition. For a person coming from a socialist country, although there was competition in Czechoslovakia, it was different. This experience turned to be useful in diplomacy too. Saying this I don’t mean that the people I meet with are my enemies or rivals but I’ve learned to be careful, to think things over.

What are your friends like?
Friendship is perhaps the highest form of relations, most people don’t have many friends, they are usually numbered on the fingers of one or at maximum both hands. Itshak Fintsi is a great friend of mine. Valentin Trayanov too who publishes interesting books but since they are too interesting no one actually reads them. In general people read little. For example he published a textbook of old Slavonic which required an immense effort and several other books for a more limited reading audience. I have many friends but I wouldn’t like to mention any names because I could miss somebody.

Would you write a book yourself?
I have already written one which tells the story of my father (Roll the Barrels). I had an extensive interview with him for a couple of months and this is how the book appeared. For 20 years I have been keeping a diary and I am going to write another book when I retire.

How would you describe in one word Paris, Prague and Sofia; what colours do you  associate them with?
Paris is the most parti-coloured, Prague is… mysterious. It is a crossroads of different cultures – Jewish, Czech, Italian, German, French. Sofia is a very pleasant city to me – with a lot of green. I like the little streets in Sofia, the town surroundings. I would say that Sofia is a terrible city. Terrible in Bulgarian has a negative meaning but in Czech it means something incredible, exceptional. When you board a bus and only in half an hour you are in the mountains at 2000 meters above sea level. With my cousin Igor I go to the mountain at least once a week.

Do you miss the cinema? What kind of movie would you make?
Maybe I will make one in time; technologies are developing so fast nowadays that anyone can go to any shop, get a camera and make a movie. Documentaries have a great future because they could help humanity in its moral upsurge and let us make sense of ourselves and of nature. Today watching films is what reading books used to be. I’m saying this in the hope that books will continue to exist. There’s nothing more wonderful than reading a book and coming back to it every day. One day I hope that I’ll have the opportunity to read all the books that I’m buying all the time. The mere fact of having them in my libraries which are in three different countries gives me pleasure.

What other places in Bulgaria have you visited in this year and a half?
Many places. But I have a fondness for Ruse where I find the spirit of Prague. I very much like Plovdiv, especially the Old Town. From the Black Sea coast I like Balchik – for me the rest of it is absolutely destroyed in ecological terms. I do hope that in time someone have these horrible hotels demolished.

Inevitably we connect you to the purple colour which has become the Czech Centre’s symbol. Why purple of all colours?
A beautiful colour, isn’t it? It symbolises higher knowledge. I believe it bears peace to the soul. The success of the Purple Lounge proves it. And purple is in fashion right now. It obviously affects many people.

What do you dream about – about the Czech Centre and your personal life?
I hope that the Centre will keep developing as it is now and that it will have more and more visitors. I dream that mankind as a whole be more concerned with its morality. This is my big dream.