November 17th lineup announced: re-enactments, concerts, exhibits to mark 30 years since the Velvet Revolution

The capital city won’t see one central celebration on November 17. Instead, events will be spread across Prague as well as throughout the Czech Republic.

This year’s biggest celebration is organized by the umbrella group Freedom Festival (Festival svobody), which has been bringing together citizens’ initiatives since 2016. Its main events will take place on Národní třída, Wenceslas Square, and Albertov.

Albertov and Národní
třída will be connected by a re-enactment of the 1989 march. It
will start at Albertov around 3 pm and will last over two hours. The
march, which will include actors in period costumes, will stop as it
did 30 years ago at Vyšehrad and then culminate at Národní třída
and Wenceslas Square.

Before the march begins, the events of 1939 and 1989 will be marked by Charles University students with a public meeting at Albertov called Free November (Svobodný listopad). The program will include speeches, panel discussions, lectures, and presentations by student associations and other civic initiatives.

Street theater, dancers, and performers will also be present. “We are trying to create a livelier and literally free atmosphere that the visitor will continue to carry with them,” program dramaturge Oskar Rejchrt said.

In the evening,
there will be a large-format lighting installation and a screening of
the documentary Memory of Nation: 1989 (Paměť národa: 1989).

The concert on
Wenceslas Square called Concert for the Future (Koncert pro
budoucnost) will start at 4:30 pm and end at 10 pm. Participating
musicians include Aneta Langerová, Lenka Dusilová, Thom Artway,
Buty, Vypsaná fixa, MIG 21 and Tata Bojs. And, yes, Tata Bojs is
playing twice on the same day.

Tata Bojs frontman
Milan Cais said the band’s large involvement is an obvious thing
for them to do. “We are a band that experienced the totalitarian
era, since we started performing in 1988. On November 17 we will play
two different concerts in the center of Prague. On Wenceslas Square
it will be our classic electric rock ’n’ roll and on Národní
třída in the afternoon it will be an acoustic performance. I myself
will be involved in the celebrations with two visual installations. I
am going to prepare a statue above the people’s heads for Národní
and for Wenceslas Square a mapping on the National Museum,” Cais
said.

Speakers this year
at Wenceslas Square include Michael Žantovský, Tomáš Halík,
Simon Panek, Martin Mejstřík, and Hynek Čermák. Foreign guests
include former US ambassador to Czechoslovakia William Luers, who
significantly helped the dissident movement from 1983 to ’86.

The satirical
carnival procession Velvet Feast (Sametové posvícení) will pass
through Prague for the eighth time. Marchers will transform burning
topics into playful and provocative forms. This year the march will
reflect the disillusionment with post-revolutionary developments and
global problems.

Post Bellum, which
gives out the awards, is also involved in video projections and light
installations on Národní třída and in educational projects for
schools.

Across the Czech Republic at 5:11 pm (17:11 for November 17), bells at churches and town halls will ring to commemorate the value of freedom and those who fought for it.

For the first time
this year, the Freedom Festival is joined by the Monument of Silence
civic initiative, which prepared an exhibition called Communication
89 or the Coup d’état Without the Internet. It will be run daily
October 11–November 30 from 2 pm to 6 pm at an exhibition space on
Letná Plain.

“We want to draw
attention to the symbolic beginning of open communication, and the
fact that the November revolution brought a return to one’s own
identity and freedom of speech,” exhibition organizer Pavel Štingl
said.

In addition to the
Prague program, more than 35 regional initiatives have already joined
the Freedom Festival platform and that number is expected to double
by November 17.