An evening dedicated to Vítězslava Kaprálová, featuring Petr Záruba’s documentary and a panel discussion on her life, music, and legacy.
TICKETS
Kaprálová / dir. Petr Záruba / 2025 / documentary / Czechia / Czech, French, and English with English subtitles / 70 min.
Director: Petr Záruba Music: Vítězslava Kaprálová, Eliška Cílková
A screening of Kaprálová will be followed by a panel discussion exploring the life, work, and legacy of Czech composer and conductor Vítězslava Kaprálová.
At the age of twenty-two, Kaprálová left for Paris to study classical music at the prestigious École Normale de Musique. Three years later, she died in France at just twenty-five. In that brief span, she conducted the BBC Orchestra, won the Smetana Prize, and created a body of work that would later reach major concert stages, including the BBC Proms and Carnegie Hall.
Petr Záruba’s documentary follows the final years of this extraordinary artist through letters sent home, archival materials, and contemporary interpretations of her music. The film captures her creative rise in prewar Europe, where she was trying to establish herself in a world of classical music still largely dominated by men.
The evening continues with a panel discussion featuring director Petr Záruba and Robinson McClellan, Mary Flagler Cary Curator of Music Manuscripts at the Morgan Library & Museum. The conversation will expand on the film’s themes, Kaprálová’s place in music history, and the renewed attention her work is receiving today. The discussion will be moderated by Brenda Vongova, President of the UN Movie Society and Artistic Director of the UN Chamber Music Society of the United Nations Staff Recreation Council.
The evening will be introduced by Tereza Porybná, Director of the Czech Center New York.
The event is organized by the Czech Center New York in collaboration with the UN Movie Society and with the support of the Czechoslovak Society for Arts and Sciences (SVU).
Kaprálová premiered at the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival in 2025, where it received the Czech Joy Award for Best Sound Design. The Czech premiere followed in February 2026.
About the panelists Petr Záruba graduated from the Faculty of Science and studied documentary filmmaking at FAMU. He is the co-creator of the series Report on the Great War (2014) and the author of documentary portraits including Jan Jedlička: Traces of a Landscape (2020) and Adam Ondra: Pushing the Limit (2022), both of which competed at Ji.hlava IDFF.
Robinson McClellan is the Mary Flagler Cary Curator of Music Manuscripts at the Morgan Library & Museum, where he curated the 2026 Mozart exhibition that brought Nannerl Mozart’s only known composition to public attention for the first time. A Yale-trained composer and scholar, his music is published by E.C. Schirmer and others.
Part of Offbeat Bohemia, an ongoing music series by the Czech Center New York
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