Media Innovation Technology Series: Richard Fidler, Radio Interviewer & Author of The Golden Maze

Come along to PCU’s Polska Campus and meet Australia’s most renowned Radio Interviewer, Richard Fidler.

David Vaughan from PCU’s School of Media & IT will be interviewing Richard, the host of Australia’s most successful podcast and radio series, Conversations. Richard will also be launching his book The Golden Maze, a history of Prague.

Richard has had a long and varied career in the entertainment industry. He first came to public notoriety as a member of the Doug Anthony Allstars, a provocative musical comedy-alt rock group who toured Adelaide and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals. They were immensely popular with the Edinburgh crowd which led to regular, comedic television appearances in the UK. On returning to Australia DAAS grew in popularity and eventually landed their own television show DAAS Kapital.

Richard left the group in 1994 to pursue a writing career and occasional hosting gigs on TV. In 2005, he began his career in radio for the national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC).

He is best known for his Conversations programme on ABC’s Radio National. The programme is a one-on-one conversation with a local or international guest with a story to tell and is broadcast throughout Australia every weekday and internationally through the Conversations Podcast. It is the most popular podcast in Australia with more than six million programme downloads a month.

Richard has continued to pursue his writing career and has successfully published non fiction works, particularly on history and politics. His latest work – The Golden Maze, is a history of the city of Prague and stretches back to the city’s origins right up to now. The book will be officially launched at this special MITS speaking event.

Richard has a long held fascination for Prague and its people having made the decision to fly to Prague during the Velvet Revolution to witness the Czech nation emerge from communism. The Golden Maze is the result from years of research, as well as one-on-one interviews with Czech historians and dissidents undertaken during his Prague residency at Prague City of Literature. Since publication, The Golden Maze has been shortlisted for the General nonfiction book of the year at the 2021 Australian Book Industry Awards.

Media Innovation Technology Series: Visual Storytelling & Art Direction

Mimi Violette and Ben Sasson: Visual Storytelling & Art Direction from Student films to Spiderman

Come and join us at PCU’s Polska Campus at the Blanicka entrance for the first MITS of the semester. 

If you cannot be here in person, then you can join using this zoom link at the advertised time or watch the Facebook livestream.

Ben and Mimi are both parents and artists. They have a combined career in the film industry of nearly 30 years. In that span, they’ve dabbled into catering for casts & crews, styled actors, consulted as script advisors, designed numerous Look Books, but mostly, they’ve ventured heavily in Art Direction, Graphic Design and Academia. 
 
For their Media Innovation Technology lecture, Ben and Mimi, who are mostly self-taught, will discuss their background in film across a range of budgets, from student-films to Spiderman 
 
And they’ll offer insight, as instructors, on how visualization––on a budget––intensifies cinematic language.
For more information on Mimi Violette and Ben Sasson visit their website here and IMDb profile here.

 

 

Media Innovation Technology Series: Helena Třeštíková, film screening of Katka

Come to the screening of the award-winning documentary film Katka, meet the Director Helena Třeštíková and take part in a Q&A session.

Join online for this special screening and Director Q&A by using this webinar link: https://praguecityuniversity-cz.zoom.us/j/96032889666

Helena’s film Katka is an extraordinarily raw and uncensored character portrait of a troubled young woman living on the edge of human existence, desperately searching for love and salvation. Will she find it in the rehab? Will she find it in the arms of the man she loves? Or in the first cry of her long-desired baby? Tagging along with her through the back streets and squalors of Prague, Trestikova gets deep under the skin of a person most of us would cross the road to avoid, and shows us Katka’s profoundly human face. You might be angry with Katka, or your heart may go out to her. One thing is certain – you will never forget her.

Helen grew up in Prague’s Wenceslas square in a cultural and inspirational environment. She graduated during the Prague Spring and moved to Western Germany in 1968. While her parents visited her in Bonn, the Warsaw pact armies marched to Czechoslovakia. After returning from Germany she worked as a production assistant. In September 1969 she began documentary movie studies at FAMU. Society was going through a phase of disillusionment and depression. She searched for a theme to explore in such difficult times and was interested in the development of human characters and lives over a long-term period. In 1980 she began the Marriage etudes; following several husbands for six years. Using this method she also shot her other documentaries. Amongst the most famous are Katka, René, Marcela, Mallory and Lída Baarová – Destruction by beauty. She has won numerous awards for her documentaries and currently teaches at the FAMU.