"A very small circle of us was told to hand over our clubhouse. That clubhouse was where I took my novice exam. And the oath, which is made by the fire. On my way to take that oath as a child, I got lost. We were traveling by train, and I got off one stop too early and got lost in the forest. I was ten years old. Everyone was looking for me. Then the guys came secretly and said, 'We won’t give the clubhouse to the Pioneers. What we built, we’ll take with us.' So we decided to hide the leader’s chair in the apiary of Kazi Holedňák, my father’s friend, who had been imprisoned. He was a jazz drummer and a beekeeper. He got about ten years and served five—officially for playing jazz. Of course, they called it something else; those trials were political and had a political background. His place kept the leader’s chair safe through the war, the 1950s, and beyond. One night, we went to the clubhouse in secret—it was on Tyršova or Fügnerova Street, one of those Sokol streets. We tore down the shelves, broke the painted walls—what was ours, we took. The chair. I was twelve years old. Just imagine—scouts destroying property. But we were raised to respect property. Mirek Vašek was there, and my brother Kim. And Baki Hojač, Ferina Šíma—our whole patrol. We took the chair and hid it in that apiary. And it still exists today. Behind it, there’s a totem. After the revival of Scouting, the Veselí Scouts still have that chair. That was our bond to it."
"And by then, word had already spread that a student, Martin Šmíd, had been killed. In the morning, Václav Havel's secretary, Vladimír Hanzel, my friend, called Rut and said that Havel was asking if Přemysl Rut and I could go to Václav Benda's apartment because there was something strange about this dead student. At the same time, he also passed on a message asking if I could come with colleagues from HaDivadlo—Provázek had already left Prague, so only HaDivadlo remained— to Činoherní klub, because something was going to happen there, and it would be good for us to be present. Now, what happened next, in my opinion, is that State Security (StB) simply lost control of the events that November. The fact that they planted a 'dead student'—played by a State Security officer Ludvík Zivčák—proves that things got out of their hands. I was walking along Národní třída. First, I stepped into a church on Malostranské náměstí and called Monika, telling her what was happening. I think I also told her to be ready to leave Brno if things took a turn for the worse. As I walked down Národní třída, it was clear that provocateurs—who I believe were State Security officers —were stirring things up. They looked like black market dealers and were shouting: 'Just around the corner, on Bartolomějská street, is the headquarters of State Security —Martin Šmíd’s murderers. Let’s go smash their windows!' I stood up there on Národní třída and said that Václav Havel had asked Přemysl Rut and me to go to Václav Benda's apartment because things were uncertain. Suddenly, a man arrived, knelt down, and said, 'I am Martin Šmíd’s uncle.' It was Weiner, the brother of journalist Jana Šmídová. Their father, Milan Weiner, was a famous radio journalist from 1968 who had been silenced for his broadcasts. He had been the boss of Luboš Dobrovský, Jiří Dienstbier, and that brave group. And this Weiner—his name is Jirka, I think—knelt there and said: 'I am Martin Šmíd’s uncle. I must tell you that the student with this identity is alive. Don’t go crazy.' And I felt it—it was a provocation."
"And the atmosphere in Most was often crazy. I came to Most in 1981, and on that very day, I started the season, and on that very day the Pluto mine exploded, I think, where, despite the warnings of the experts, they sent miners there to mine and broke the records of the socialist labour brigade. It shook the ground and the way they dealt with it at the time was to stop the fire from spreading with a brick wall and behind that wall were these miners and many of them were still alive. So then when they broke it down, they had their hands chewed off, scraped off as they tried to knock the wall down with their own hands. It was never investigated who was responsible. And even the widows were never compensated and even some of them were put in a mental institution. There was a mass funeral card in all the lockers of Most. And I remember that it was a regulation that the funeral card had to be in all the windows and in all the lockers of the various after school clubs. So there was a butcher shop next to the theater, and there was a funeral card in the butcher shop, and next to it was the menu: smoked miner's flank. The miners behind that wall were actually lightly smoked. And smoked miner's flank was a specialty of the local butcher shop, smoked pork belly. There was also a box club by the theatre, the Squares Puzzle and Crossword Club. The Squares, the Red Star, a funeral card of 52 miners. That was a terrible mess, and it showed the regime's cowardice and its inability to compensate the families of the miners. Husák had to come there personally at that time, to promise the miners everything possible. That means that about two days before, they had shut down all the chimneys so that there would not be such a smell. They sanded the stairs in the exclusive restaurant that was next to the theatre so that Husák wouldn't slip down there, because it was very slippery if it rained, it was marble of some kind. They herded all the people under the grandstand. I took a tram to Litvínov, where I went to a pub, because there was alcohol available. In Most, beer wasn't being sold, alcohol wasn't allowed to be sold, so that the workers wouldn't get drunk and shout at Husák. There were State Security officers and People's Militia everywhere. The People's Militia were under the grandstand, making sure that nobody did anything to Husák. And I was sitting in the town hall cellar in Litvínov, and there we were getting drunk. Then I went to the antique shop in Litvínov, which was excellent. Among other things, I bought there the poems of Reynek's wife Suzanne Renaud and Vaculik's Rušný dům (Busy House). It was just there and nobody was watching it, so I bought it there. Nobody came to see that they had it. And I say that because Most region is also one of my big themes, then I ended up making a big film on that theme "Kamenolom boží". That's an accurate concept."
Director, documentary filmmaker, publicist, actor, screenwriter, educator and (from 2024) senator. He was born on 23 July 1958 in Uherské Hradiště as the older of two sons to parents Marie and Břetislav. He grew up in a Sokol and Scout family in Veselí nad Moravou. At the age of nine, he joined the newly restored scout organization in Veselí nad Moravou, which was dissolved in 1970. While studying at the grammar school in Strážnice, he co-founded the underground theatre Atrapy and the Q Club in Veselí nad Moravou, where those who were stumbling on the edge of the regime performed. After graduating from high school, he enrolled at the Faculty of Civil Engineering in Brno. Due to a conflict during a compulsory brigade in Dukovany, he was suspended before he started school. After six months he left the school on his own. He worked as a worker on a duck farm, briefly worked as a stagehand at the Workers’ Theatre in Zlín and as a member of the ensemble at the Slovácké Theatre. Two years later, he joined HaDivadlo as an actor. On 17 November 1989, he performed in a joint project of HaDivadlo and Divadlo na provázku called Rozrazil in Prague’s Juniorclub Na Chmelnici. During the production, he co-initiated the interruption of the performance with an interview with the beaten student Roman Racek, which was the first news about Národní třída. He moderated all demonstrations during the Velvet Revolution in Brno. After the revolution, he started working with Czech Television as a director and scriptwriter. He made a number of documentary films. Currently (2024) he is an associate professor at the Studio of Directing and Dramaturgy at the Brno JAMU and in the same year he was elected to the Senate for the Brno - City constituency. He lives in Brno. He and his wife Monika raised two daughters: producer Juliana Rychlíková and journalist Apolena Rychlíková. His brother František Rychlík (1964-2018) was the publisher and editor-in-chief of the samizdat magazine Střední Evropa (Brno version).
A makeshift stage on Liberty Square in Brno during the Velvet Revolution. Břetislav Rychlík (right), Miroslav Donutil (in the middle with paper in hand)
A makeshift stage on Liberty Square in Brno during the Velvet Revolution. Břetislav Rychlík (right), Miroslav Donutil (in the middle with paper in hand)
