Of all the schools of film which were allowed to sprout behind the Iron Curtain, it was in Czechslovakia which contrived to export its work most successfully to the West.Poland had Andrzej Wajda. Hungary had István Szabó. But Czech cinema seemed to sprout out of a fertile collaboration with its national literature. Before he wrote The Joke, lest we forget, Milan Kundera was a lecturer in world literature at the Film Faculty of Charles University in Prague. There are certainly other ways to measure these things, but Jiří Menzel won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1967 with his magnificent Read more ...

Following the recent UK premiere of his Symphony No 4 ("Los Angeles") at the Proms, Arvo Pärt's 75th birthday celebrations continue with a two-day conference on 24-25 September hosted at London's Southbank Centre. Presented in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Music, with the composer in residence, academics from the UK, USA and Canada will give a total of 13 papers on various aspects of Pärt's music over the two days.Long-standing Pärt collaborators The Hilliard Ensemble are set to enliven proceedings with a daytime performance on the Friday (before giving the world premiere Read more ...

As the glorious parade of British orchestras at the Proms has showcased, it's never been a better time for the native music scene across the board. Now the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, currently enjoying a honeymoon period with its Music Director of two seasons Andris Nelsons, has taken another step towards consolidating its post-Rattle reputation. Edward Gardner (pictured above in ENO rehearsal by Chris Christodoulou), currently doing wonderful things at English National Opera, is to take up the post of Principal Guest Conductor in September 2011.It's been a good year for both Read more ...

The Arts Desk has been in two minds about Mercury Award winners The xx, who picked up the £20,000 cheque last night. Joe Muggs loved them, Bruce Dessau was sceptical. Singer and bass player Oliver Sim told the audience at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London that they weren't expecting to win."Wow," he said. "Thank you so much. We've had the most incredible year and it has just felt like every day we've just woken up to something incredible we just weren't expecting." Everyone else rather did expect them to win, including the bookies, although grizzled ex-mod Paul Weller made a late run. Watch Read more ...

Could Peter Carey possibly become the first author to win the Booker three times? Oscar and Lucinda (1988) and True History of the Kelly Gang (2001) both previously won him the most prestigious and hotly contended literary gong this side of the Atlantic (and south of Stockholm). The judges, led by Andrew Motion, have whittled the long list of 13 down to the final half-dozen, and Carey’s Parrot and Olivier in America is among them.In order to win he will have to impress the panel more than the five other contenders. Here is the full list: Peter Carey: Parrot and Olivier in America Emma Read more ...

Did anyone find the aged-rocker thrash of Mark Anthony Turnage's new work at the Proms, Hammered Out  - a bit of a disappointment to Edward Seckerson - oddly familiar? This brilliant YouTube remix will tell you why. And for all the orchestral flash, which struck me too as a bit vieux jeu, give me the dazzling Beyoncé Knowles and her sensational dance routine in that video over the Turnage piece any day.

Every year the European Film Academy asks film-goers to become an electorate. They have the chance to vote on their favourite film for the People’s Choice Award. Last year they plumped for Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire. Previous winners include Volver, Life is Beautiful and Amélie. Which film will it be in 2010? You decide.This year the winner will be picked from one of 10 very disparate films - the candidates include a French cartoon, a British political thriller, Swedish fantasy and an Italian domestic comedy. Not all have yet been released in the UK. Have a look at theartsdesk's What's Read more ...

Tony Blair has a book to flog. Andrew Marr has an interview to conduct. And theartsdesk has another TV programme to review live on Twitter.We tweeted our first review when Jonathan Ross said goodbye to the BBC. The Tony Blair Interview is on BBC Two on Wednesday at 7pm. Graeme Thomson and Jasper Rees will be watching and tweeting. Their conversation will then be posted on the site to be read in its entirety. Sign up follow to Graeme here and Jasper here in order to read their 140-character responses live. You can also follow theartsdesk here.

In a terrific year for comedy at the Fringe, the winners of the 2010 Foster's Edinburgh Comedy Awards (formerly the Perriers) are Russell Kane, Roisin Conaty and Bo Burnham. The prizes - cheques for £10,000, £5,000 and £5,000 - were presented to the three comedians on Saturday in the Spiegel Tent in George Square in a celebration of 30 years of these awards.The 10-strong panel (critics, producers and members of the public who won competitions based on their extensive knowledge of live comedy) debated long and hard to whittle down 400-plus eligible shows, and it was good to see so many women Read more ...

The Blitz wartime version of Ovid’s Metamorphoses that David Nice was raving about is New York-bound now, after winning one of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival’s most generous awards, the Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Award. This, set up in 2004 in perpetuity, gives the winning production an all-expenses paid trip to New York’s Off-Off-Broadway to stage the show for a run of up to a month (and to keep the net box office receipts).The run has the added bonus of being timed to coincide with New York’s  Association of Performing Arts Presenters convention, which brings some 4,000 Read more ...

The Royal Opera House is appealing to the public to record sounds to contribute to their three-day If-A-Tree festival in early September, curated by Joanna McGregor. Sound artist Scanner is transforming the former Floral Hall into an aural forest with a soundscape to which he wants Joe Bloggs or John Doe or indeed (thanks to technology) anyone in the entire world to contribute. People are being asked to use their phones or tape recorders to capture sounds conceptually related to forests - it’s suggested whimsically that these can include “forests of children” at a playground, or “forests of Read more ...

You'll just have to take it on trust from me that to hear the world's most responsive orchestra conducted by the world's finest living conductor in the deepest symphony ever written is the one concert hall experience you can't afford to miss. And since tickets for this event have been the hardest-to-get ever, live viewing will have to be a second best for most. Tonight you can watch Claudio Abbado conducting his beloved superband the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in Mahler's Ninth Symphony as it unfurls from the Nouvel-designed concert hall. It's here on the Lucerne Festival's website, starting Read more ...