Naked CITY

director, A Pin for a Butterfly

A word of caution to any filmmaker looking for a fabulous location: don't go to Prague! Underneath that ease with which the city and its people lend themselves to you, there's magic, and once you've been and worked there, you'll never be the same again. Because even now, under its prosperous and laid-back newly capitalist picture-postcard façade, Prague weaves an altogether more hidden and uneasy spell which will go on working long after your film is finished.

You will wake to the sound of church bells, and walk the narrow labyrinths of cobbled streets with houses rooted in legend, houses whose names evoke the imagination - The Three Golden Hearts, The Black Ram, The Green Pike - their door knockers grotesque and disturbingly gargoyle-like, guarding the secrets of Prague's alchemical past.

The spirit of Golem still haunts the old Jewish town, and even the ecstatic angel statues that dance on every street corner seem to know something as they beckon you to join them. The river sings through its old weirs and if you wait for the tourists to go to bed and stand on Charles Bridge deep at night, the city rewards you with a time-traveller's glimpse of a baroque dawn in the company of silent saints watching you from the bridge's parapets.

I promise you, even long after you've finished filming, Prague will haunt you, and beckon you back like an old unfinished love affair. You have been warned.