With the Festival of Nations® 2012, we are celebrating 80 years of Minnesota cultural diversity. Come and enjoy the Czech and Slovak cultures together with many more at the Saint Paul RiverCenter. Enjoy and shop at the Czech& Slovak International Bazaar. You can travel the world under one roof as 49 Cultural Exhibits will stamp your passport. Watch the Slovak egg decorating and straw weaving among many other authentic folk artisan demonstrations. Indulge in delicious international cuisine and stroll among three stages to be mesmerized by SLOVCZECH (“Czech Musicians”) and Lipa Slovak Folk Dancers (“Slovak Dancers”) as well as three groups of dancers (“Czech & Slovak”) from the Sokol, MN.

Please mark your calendar for following Czech and Slovak performances:

Atrium Stage Entertainment

• Friday May 4, 2012 at 5:30 PM – SLOVCZECH Musicians
• Saturday, May 5, 2012 at 2:30 PM – Lipa Slovak Folk Dancers
• Saturday May 5, 2012 at 8:00 PM – SLOVCZECH Musicians
• Sunday, May 6, 2012 at 4:00 PM – Czech & Slovak Dancers
• Sunday May 6, 2012 at 5:00 PM – SLOVCZECH Musicians

Café Stage Entertainment

• Friday May 4, 2012 at 7:30 PM – SLOVCZECH Musicians
• Friday May 4, 2012 at 9:30 PM – SLOVCZECH Musicians
• Saturday May 5, 2012 at 5:30 PM – SLOVCZECH Musicians

World Stage Schedule

• Friday May 4, 2012 at 5:00 PM – Lipa Slovak Folk Dancers
• Saturday, May 5, 2012 at 11:00 AM – Taneční Mládež (Dancing Youth)
• Saturday, May 5, 2012 at 1:30 PM – Taneční Mládež (Dancing Youth)
• Saturday, May 5, 2012 at 3:00 PM – Czech & Slovak Dancers
• Saturday, May 5, 2012 at 5:00 PM – Lipa Slovak Folk Dancers
• Sunday, May 6, 2012 at 2:00 PM – Czech & Slovak Dancers

The Festival of Nations® is the largest and longest running multicultural festival in Minnesota, celebrating cultural diversity with food, music, demonstrations, exhibits and dance. At the Festival of Nations we are able to renew a sense of pride in our Czech and Slovak ethnic heritages.

Visit Festival of Nations website for more information.

When: Saturday, April 21, 2012 at 9:00 – 12:00 a.m.

Where: ROOM 2-224 Carlson School of Management, 321 19th Ave So., Minneapolis, MN. Park on street or in the ramp opposite the school accessible by sky walk

The two sisters, Mrs. Jarmila Sklenickova and Mrs. Miloslava Kalibova have unbelievable memories they will share with us, while their granddaughter, Sarka Kadlecová will moderate the panel in Prague, with J. Mestenhauser here. Mrs. Sklenickova just published her memoirs (also now available in English under the title “If I were a boy I would have been shot”) and both are key  persons appearing now in a full feature movie by the same name, LIDICE.

We have been able to obtain the feature movie, Lidice, that is topping all ratings in Prague, even surpassing the film made from Vaclav Havel’s theater script, Odchazeni (Departing).

PUT THIS DATE ON YOUR CALENDAR NOW. TO MEET SPECIAL COSTS ASSOCIATED WITH THIS PROGRAM, A VOLUNTARY DONATION OF $5.00 ($3.00 FOR STUDENTS) WILL BE GREATFULLY APPRECIATED.

You are invited to join us as Peter chronicles their journey that had been in the planning for 10 years from Hrejkovice, Czechoslovakia to America.

Hosted by the German-American Fellowship Assn., April 14th, 2012, at 8PM at the Bloomington “Living Hope” Lutheran Church, 9350 Portland Ave. South, Bloomington, MN.

Further information at www.gafa.org or email gafaorg@gmail.com. A $3.00 donation is requested from non-members.

The Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival is the most ambitious and best attended film event in the Upper Midwest.  Over its three-week run, the Festival presents an exciting and diverse slate of some 300 narrative, documentary and short films from over 60 countries, hosts many visiting filmmakers to introduce and discuss their works, sand includes an array of events, panels, discussions, and parties.  The Festival takes place on the five screens of the St. Anthony Main Theatre, set along the banks of the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis.

Czech and Slovak Cultural Center of Minnesota would like to invite to Czech and Slovak films at Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival.

Films from Slovakia

Matchmaking Mayor

Showtime: 

Apr 17 2012 – 5:30pm

Apr 27 2012 – 1:45pm

• Read more

The House

Showtime: 

Apr 19 2012 – 4:45pm

May 1 2012 – 6:45pm

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Films from Czech Republic

Nicky’s Family

Showtime: 

Apr 22 2012 – 4:00pm

Apr 29 2012 – 3:45pm

• Read more

Matchmaking Mayor

Showtime: 

Apr 17 2012 – 5:30pm

Apr 27 2012 – 1:45pm

• Read more

Leaving

This first (and last) feature film by former Czech President Vaclav Havel, the internationally renowned playwright and dissident who led the Velvet Revolution that toppled communism in Czechoslovakia in 1989, was completed shortly before Havel’s untimely death in 2011.

Showtime: 

Apr 18 2012 – 5:00pm

Apr 20 2012 – 1:45pm

• Read more

Thursday, April 12 at 7pm – Schmitt Music Edina

SLOVCZECH is a group of musicians, who love to share joy of Central and Eastern European folk music. The band started in 2008 in Minneapolis. It initially focused on dance music, which would serve Czech and Slovak communities in Midwest US. Click HERE for more information about the band.

Click HERE for more details.

Place:  Carlson School of Management, Room 2-224. Carlson is located on the West Bank Campus at 321 Nineteenth Avenue South.  A skyway connects the building to the 19^th Avenue Parking Ramp.

Time:  9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Saturday, March 31, 2012

Speaker:  Professor Paddy Dale, St Olaf College

Vaclav Havel:  A Moral Beacon in a Time of Transition; Politics, Morality, and Civil Society

Vaclav Havel (1936-2011) was a political man without political ambitions:  a universal critic primarily concerned with a moral critique of Communist Party socialism but who also directed himself as much at the Western world as he did at the Soviet bloc.  Havel became leader of Czech dissent because of his own moral courage.  He enjoined all of us to “live in truth,” take responsibility for ourselves and construct a healthy civil society.  The lecture will examine the sources of Havel’s political morality, his acquisition of authority within Czech dissent and his emphasis on Civil Society as the palliative to our political social and economic problems.

The event will be focused only on those consular activities which require personal appearance of applicants:
1. Application for a new Slovak passport,*
2. Delivery of an issued Slovak passport,
3. Application for a Certificate of Slovak citizenship,
4. Authentication of a signature.

*Applicants for a new Slovak passport should arrange an appointment in advance through e-mail: cg.newyork@mzv.sk
*Applicants for a new Slovak passport should submit:
1. filled out application form,
2. original of Slovak Birth certificate,
3. valid Slovak passport or valid Slovak ID (obciansky preukaz) or valid Certificate of Slovak Citizenship.

All applicants should bring copies of their original documents with them.

Consular fees are payable in cash or money order only. No personal checks are accepted.
I would appreciate it if you can distribute this information to Slovak communities in your area, so the Slovaks can take advantage of the Slovak Consular days in Chicago.

Please, find enclosed a detailed information and links on the Consular Days in Chicago in Slovak language.

Click HERE for more details.

Gradually, the band profiled into more concert oriented, modern sounding folk rock formation, heavily influenced by central european bands Cechomor, Dikanda and Kroke.

SLOVCZECH currently features:

Aurora Adamson
- fiddle, mandolin and vocal

Petr Bachan
- guitar, keyboards and vocal

Jozef Klobusnik
- accordion and vocal

Lubor Manolov
- guitar and vocal

SLOVCZECH band also regularly features children from Czech and Slovak families, who play and sing during occasions – St. Nicholas, Christmas and Easter.

During last 3 years, SLOVCZECH performed several times at  Festival of Nations, St. Paul, MN; Minnesota Sokol Days; Dozinky Days in New Prague,MN; Cedar Rapid BrewNost and Milwaukee Sokol. SLOVCZECH also  performed solo concerts at Harriet Lake Band Shell as a part of Twin Cities Music in the Park summer series.

SLOVCZECH will be performing in March during new Edina Schmitt music opening and it may be also occasionaly seen playing at some of Twin City venues.

Come and join us to support this great local band!

We think of World War II as a period in world history of enormous loss of human life, indeed the most destructive episode in the last three centuries.  Losses of human life on this scale can only be estimated, and current estimates of the military and civilian dead, whether due to violent attacks, genocide, disease, or starvation caused directly by the war, run to between 62 and 78 million people in all theaters.  Civilian deaths ran to between 40 and 52 million.  Yet the human suffering in Europe did not stop with the formal end of hostilities in 1945.  Deaths continued for several years after the war because of starvation and disease in bombed out cities and above all among the refugees created by massive forced migration after the fighting stopped.  The largest number of those forced migrants, expellees, in fact, were ethnic Germans who were forced out of their home communities in many parts of East-Central as they fled from the advancing Soviet military forces or were deliberately expelled by Soviet authorities and the new post-war governments in East-Central Europe.  That movement of ethnic Germans included between 12 and 14 million people, probably the largest single forced migration in modern history.

A large German-speaking minority, which numbered around 3 million people at the end of the World War II, had resided in parts of Bohemia and Moravia for many centuries.  A wave of ill-organized expulsions between May and August 1945, the so-called “wild expulsions,” encouraged by Czechoslovak authorities, drove some 700,000 to 800,000 people out of Czechoslovakia, regardless of whether they were directly implicated in the Nazi occupation or not.  A more organized process, supervised and regulated by the Czechoslovak government, drove out 2,000,000 more between January and October 1946.  In fact, already in London during the war, the Czechoslovak government in exile had decided to resolve the longstanding Czech-German political conflict by expelling a large part or all of the German-speaking population; and a broad consensus of Czech and Slovak political forces, as well as the victorious allies, supported the action.  Any serious questioning of whether the largely indiscriminate mass expulsion was right or truly justified has remained taboo in much of the Czech political spectrum ever since — as Václav Havel found out when he raised the question soon after becoming president of Czechoslovakia.