The talented cinematographer Jack Cardiff talks to Ian Christie, professor of film and media history at Birkbeck College. Cardiff was the first person in the UK to use the new technicolor format. He was given his big break by director / producer team Michael Powell and Emmerich Pressburger who, noticing how technically precise the young camera operator was, duly promoted him to cinematographer. Cardiff didn't look back and became visually responsible for the best Powell and Pressburger projects -- A Matter Of Life And Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1947) and The Red Shoes (1949). Powell trusted Cardiff and offered him an enormous amount of freedom and big budgets to experiment with new ideas and techniques. This evening however will not centre solely upon his filmography or upon the technical aspects of his work but instead concentrate on the strong influence that paintings in the National Gallery had on the future image maker. We'll attend this talk ourselves just to find out which pictures in the NG's collection inspired Conan The Destroyer (1984) and Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985).

With £100,000 invested in creating new works for this year's competition, and £40,000 prize money, The Place Prize means big money on the dance scene. Some of the hottest European talents -- although most of them are actually British or British trained -- will compete and you, as the public, will have a chance to vote for your faves. From the 20 commissions, five have been chosen for further performances where they will compete for £10,000 of audience-voted prizes. Following the final performance, the judges will award the grand prize of £25,000 to The Place Prize Winner 2006. This year's judges are Robyn Archer, Artistic Director for Liverpool, European Capital of Culture 2008; Guy Cools, dance dramaturg and producer; Brian Eno, musician, producer, artist and author; Rose Fenton, independent arts producer and co-founder of Lift; and Chris Ofili, artist. This panel is chaired by the spearhead of the London dance scene: John Ashford, Director of The Place. This is better than texting your favourite house-mate, more exciting than putting yourself through another pop-idol: this is the future of contemporary dance leaping before your very eyes. Expect chasses of joy, jetes of tears and lots of amazingly beautiful performers.

NB: The Place Prize Finals 2006 runs from 20/09 till 30/09.

The story goes that history's most influential art critic, Ruskin, was repulsed to the point of physical illness upon discovering (on his wedding night) his newlywed's pubic hair. He had apparently assumed she would be like the coldly smooth alabaster goddesses and hairless beauties captured on canvas with which he usually fraternised. The man was blatantly dislocated from a normal sense of the world -- was he really the right guy to explain the subtle nuances of artists' work to the hoi polloi? Later, the artist Whistler, following a particularly vitriolic indictment of his work by Ruskin, took the critic to court for misinterpretation. Whistler opened the floodgates and here we are today: retaliating, bitching and sycophantic cooing (in order to get good reviews) are all par for the course. Do we care what the critic has to say any longer? Do artists care? After 10 years at The Guardian filled with hate mail, bags of poo and schmoozing acolytes at every turn, Adrian Searle is joined by Jake Chapman, former YBA and infant terrible of the art circus (now arguably rather more part of the establishment), to attempt to work it out.

The Band Agency are a non profit music organisation dedicated to developing bands and artists across the UK. Aspiring to this status primarily through live music promotion, this showcase night is headlined by Nebraskan six-piece Tilly And The Wall -- undoubtedly the main draw on the line-up. They derive from the same scene that spawned Bright Eyes and Rilo Kiley, and both bands, particularly the latter, are good reference points in describing their melodic indie-pop sound. Download the song "Nights Of The Living Dead" off their recent Wild Like Children album -- if you like it, it's highly likely you will be converted to the Tilly cult. Other notable artists involved in this showcase include talented guitarist Newton Faulkner, singer-songwriter Mike Rosenberg and the sublime and charming organic indie-pop of Paris Motel. All of the artists have garnered a healthy following and have reached that strange industry position of being regarded as "ones to watch". Whether any of the bands make the leap to mainstream popularity remains to be seen, but the possibility of seeing so many new and exciting acts on one bill makes this night an interesting option.

Dance Umbrella 2006 will bring music to your ears, joy to your eyes and get your heart racing with inner warmth. This year's festival has a heavy emphasis on musically driven programmes, with both live and recorded music from the grand scale of Merce Cunningham's Ocean (21/09 to 24/09), performed live at the Roundhouse by 150 musicians, to the choreography of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (28/09 to 30/09), danced to music ranging from Joan Baez to Beethoven and from John Coltrane to Bartok at the Barbican. If you liked Michael Clark's 2005 Stravinsky project O don't miss its second part, Mmm... (27/10 till 04/11), also at the Barbican. The Wells will be the set for Lea Anderson's kaleidoscopic chorus-line graph of geometric production numbers, Yippeee!!! (03/11 and 04/11), performed by the Cholmondeleys and the Featherstonehaughs to an electro squeak groove score by composer Steve Blake. At the Queen Elizabeth Hall, a live children's choir and indigenous southern African instruments accompany the Stephen Petronio / Rufus Wainwright (20/10 and 21/10) collaboration and Association Noa / Company Vincent Mantsoe (17/10 and 18/10) respectively. At The Place choreographer Jonathan Burrows presents the world premiere of Speaking Dance (18/10 and 19/10), the final instalment of the trilogy of duets created and performed by, himself and composer Matteo Fargion.

NB: Dance Umbrella 2006 runs from 21/09 till 05/11.

Another grand night at The Poke and another stellar line-up to look forward to. Ostensibly this is an album launch for Milanese, creator of vast basslines and terrifying beats whose recent work with members of Virus Syndicate has seen him taking a new direction into dubstep territory -- melding it into the filthy darkstep sound of late '90s drum and bass. Alongside him you can see dubstep wunderkind and ex metal acolyte Distance, a feted young DJ / producer with a fine ear for an anthem, and lest you assume that this is a genre-only night stick around for Clark, also playing and with another great album to promote. His forthcoming release on Warp pitches him as able to marry the kind of nervous, driving beats that clubbers demand with a rich and scintillating set of melodies and feedback washes -- poles apart from dubstep in conception and execution but just as exciting and original. Nights like this remind KF that London is on the verge of something really seismic in dance music, if we can say that without sounding too much like Mary Anne Hobbs (bless her).

These three erotic shorts make for an odd cinema trip. In every sense. As a collection, they'll certainly polarise opinion. Are they erotic? Sort of. Are they original? Not really. Yet there is something oddly compelling about the trilogy. Wong Kar-wai, Steven Soderbergh and Michelangelo Antonioni couldn't have more contrasting styles, or explore more different notions of eroticism in more alien ways -- and the result is at best tantalising, at worst embarrassing. It opens with Wong's The Hand, a sensual, tragic quasi fairytale about a prostitute and the dressmaker who creates her seductive costumes. It's teasingly voyeuristic, and Soderbergh's story of an ad exec (Robert Downey Jr) with a creative block and a recurring illicit fantasy follows with an uncomfortable jolt. With satirical dexterity it explores the veiled sexual tension feared and exorcised in '50s America. Bizarrely it's Antonioni whose film is a feat of astounding cackhandedness. The tangential affairs between, quite frankly, shabby two-bit porn losers are presumably intended to be arousingly random, but rapidly fall into the pointless and banal category. Together, the films form a weird melange; an interesting curio for the idiosyncratic cinephile.

NB: Eros is released in London on 22/09. Other films of note released on the same date are Keane and Alfonso Cuaron's Children Of Men.

Hosted by nikewoman spokesperson Kymberlee Jay, the three-day festival features over 100 performers, including legendary US b-girl Asia One, Missy Elliot choreographers Cicely and Olisa, resident DJ Nicci Cheeks, international hip-hop companies and local young women. This promises to be an action-packed weekend of performances, battles, live DJ sets, film screenings and discussions, and an empowering, all-female celebration of women in hip-hop. Each night, specially chosen contestants from all over the world compete for prize money in live battles. And if you are not so sure about committing a whole evening to it, pop down to the QEH foyer for free performances from 6:15pm on 22/09 or during the intervals. You can have drinks on the terrace overlooking the Thames and check-out some the hottest female hip-hop acts of the moment. The festival concludes with award winning Boy Blue -- a must see company! And if you get hooked why not try a breakin' or poppin' workshop at the Greenwich Dance Agency? Organised by the South Bank Centre and Independance, this weekend will certainly shake your perception of dance and, with money at stake, the battles promise to be riotous.

NB: b.supreme runs from 22/09 till 24/09.

Michael Finnissy, one of the UK's most original, prolific, imaginative and radical composers -- yet still not really recognised as such in his native country -- celebrates his 60th birthday this year. To mark the occasion, other composers, performers and the British Music Information Centre, who have had connections with him throughout his life, have put together a weekend of concerts to perform works spanning his entire career. Saturday begins with the ensemble Ixion, forefronted by Andrew Toovey, performing, amongst others, the fantastically titled Casual Nudity and Giant Abstract Samba, moving on to devilishly difficult solo works and finishing at St Paul's Church, Knightsbridge with a choral concert given by the outstanding EXAUDI under direction of James Weeks. Sunday continues with ensemble plus-minus, a world premiere of a concert version of his chamber opera, Therese Raquin, and finishes with -- the not quite as cheery as it sounds and with a possible optional "o" in "country" -- English Country Tunes performed by the composer himself (a world class pianist in his own right). Expect lots of variety and inspiration from music from medieval times up to the present and from many different kinds of culture -- detail, complexity, simplicity, control, chaos, beauty and brutality are all there in his music.

NB: the celebration also marks the start of the bmic's Cutting Edge series, which is set to provide an autumn's worth of all kinds of contemporary classical music. Also of note, the Ixion, plus-minus and Finnissy concerts will be recorded by BBC Radio 3 and will be broadcast on the Hear And Now programme later in the year.

Bobby Baker, a woman (as she usually makes clear before the start of her performances), often speaks of her "eureka" moment when she first baked a cake for a friend's party. Having come out of art school she was struggling to find her medium, and here she found it at last. Not just dough and icing, but the unveiling of it, the ceremony, the warmth in the room, the presentation -- true performance art, by someone who comes over more as a universal aunty / matron than a Franko B. Her warmth, charm, no-nonsense style and ability to transform common objects and experience are always a joy to witness, and this time there's an added poignancy in that she brings her own recent experience with therapy into the eccentric concoction, holding an "open session" with a pea (helping it to unfreeze) among other life-changing techniques. A post-show talk on 21/09 will see Baker and Jon Snow in conversation about human rights and mental health.

NB: Bobby Baker will perform How To Live on 20/09, 21/09, 22/09 and 23/09.

After the release of what is regarded as the benchmark in minimal house, a lot of the tunes on Minus Records' min2MAX compilation have gone on to classic status. And have rightfully ended up soundtracking the summer. None more so than Heartthrob's "Baby Kate". This wonderfully simple tune captures all that's right with the scene at the moment. A melodic hook that morphs and twists for maximum dancefloor appeal. Piercing, deep bass kicks that rumble any half decent sound system. And a vibe that is undeniably Berlin. Heartthrob (aka Jesse Siminski) will be joined by sturdy DJ support from Magda. Her recent She's A Dancing Machine mix merely cemented her reputation as a fierce mixer and refined purveyor. And of course we mustn't forget label boss Richie Hawtin, who'll make sure that the Minus minimalist manifesto is heard loud and clear.

'Tis the season once again for fairs, festivals and fashion -- everyone celebrating the various applications of art and design. The LDF is now in its second week, and while it boasts a myriad of events and possible itineraries, the very breadth and diversity of the fiesta itself can become a baffling ordeal. Sheaves of lists of designers disguise big names, and monumentalise the army of new talent that perpetually fuels the design machine. This week the LDF brings us a few key miss-at-your-own-risk events that showcase the best of what the festival has on offer. 100% Design tends to be a real crowd pleaser, featuring the newest, slickest and most unusual interior designers and their wares -- a definite must for furniture fans, and anyone with an eye for detail. For those who feel the need for a slightly sharper edge, and maybe with a little more lust for pure style than slick lines, 100% East will be on at the Old Truman Brewery from Thursday till Sunday. In the Nicholls and Clarke buildings, at the same time as 100% East , designersblock shows new work by emerging young designers from the UK and abroad, and has established itself as an alternative means of achieving the traditional "ends" of design. It is a production company, an industry hotspot and an event unto itself, a must even if you give the rest of the festival a pass.

NB: the London Design Festival runs till 30/09, 100% Design runs from 21/09 till 24/09 and designersblock runs 21/09 till 24/09.

In today's post-industrial capitalist society, it seems impossible to make the whole not greater than the sum of its parts. Take two renowned artists, one of the greatest living footballers, a haunting score, and a Hollywood production team and how could the result be anything but epic? Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait is a 92-minute real-time feature film surveilling Zinedine Zidane during a Real Madrid match. It is not an easy watch. The rousing dramatic tension of televised matches is replaced with a dispassionate and fragmented view spliced together from the footage of 17 cameras trained solely on Zidane. The film mimics the formal structures of mass-media leaving no graspable emotional product. One is neither euphoric nor enlightened. Zidane is not a hero but rather an existential figure, abstracted and caught between psychological and media spheres. So alienating is the effect it is almost as if it didn't need to be Zidane; it could have been anyone really. Maybe this is the 21st century. It's not about your 15 minutes. As Douglas Gordon has said, it's about someone doing his job. Aside from some brief interjections of sentimentality this is tough, dissatisfying but ultimately thought-provoking.

NB: Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait is released in London on 29/09. Films of note released this week are Eros, Keane and Alfonso Cuaron's Children Of Men.

Mark Haddon is best known for The Curious Incident Of The Dog In the Night-Time, an honest insight into the life of a teenager with Asperger's Syndrome, who must prove his innocence when a neighbourhood dog is killed. The novel won The Whitbread Book of the Year Award and became an international bestseller. But, can Haddon live up to this success with his new novel, A Spot Of Bother, which has been overlooked by this year's judges of the Man Booker Prize? While The Curious Incident appealed to all ages, reflecting Haddon's extensive career as a children's author, A Spot Of Bother charts adult territory (sexual desire in old age, the fear of death and madness) which is unlikely to appeal to fun-loving young things. At its centre, however, the novel shares with its predecessor a mix of pathos and humour, in its portrayal of the extraordinary aspects of an ordinary life. George, 57, is a dignified, retired man who is quietly going insane, while surrounded by a dysfunctional family -- his wife is having an affair and his daughter is about to marry a man with "strangler's hands". In this talk, Haddon shares his views on writing with John Mullan, Professor of English Literature at UCL and host of the Guardian's Book Club.

Of all the events programmed by the Barbican to mark Steve Reich's 70th birthday, this generous, multi-disciplinary triple-bill is perhaps the most exciting. Reich must be one of the world's most sought-after collaborators -- musicians, singers and dancers have always been drawn to his irresistibly kinetic scores. Not all this work is new; Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and Rosas originally created dances for Fase in 1983, which returns here as the first part. Part two of the bill however is a world premiere, and marks an exciting collaboration between Paul Hillier's acclaimed Theatre Of Voices (a six-person vocal ensemble for whom Reich wrote his 1995 Proverb, one of the two pieces here) and London's Richard Alston Dance Company. Akram Khan follows with the London premiere of Variations For Vibes, Pianos And Strings, a work for three dancers set to a newly-commissioned Reich score for four vibraphones, two pianos and three string quartets performed live by the intrepid London Sinfonietta, conducted by Alan Pierson (who interviews Reich in this video).

NB: this triple bill is performed on 28/09, 29/09 and 30/09 and is part of Phases - The Music Of Steve Reich festival (runs 28/09 till 08/10).

In 1972 the Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta pulled stockings over her face and photographed herself as a misshapen, defiant criminal: her nose skewed to the side, her skin a generic fake flesh-tone. More recently the American artist Kelley Walker smeared white, milk and dark chocolate over a photograph of a black protester and a white policeman: the resulting image looks like it had been drowned in ditch water too dirty to touch. The use of the body and of earthy, decaying matter -- which gives works like Mendieta's and Walker's such an immediate punch -- is linked in Thomas Dane's current excellent exhibition to that great insurmountable issue of race in America. By focusing on the artists' formal strategies, this tightly curated show approaches racial relations with intelligence and sophistication -- and with a number of American artists well-known in the US but less so here, it is a welcome counterpart to the sprawling shows of American art currently up at the Serpentine and coming to the Royal Academy.

NB: runs till 03/10.

After an elegant That Was The week That Was special on the demise of JFK in 1963 endeared him to US audiences, David Frost was immediately offered his own vehicle, Frost On America. The format was unlike the biting satire of TW3 and was light hearted and genial. In 1977 Richard Nixon, perhaps in search of public redemption and attracted by the idea of being interviewed by an intelligent but sycophantic host, agreed to appear. The pairing became nothing short of an unofficial inquisition, with Frost candidly prising a confession out of the former president on live television over the Watergate Hotel misdeeds. The Donmar presents Peter Morgan's play Frost / Nixon. Directed by Micheal Grandage it concentrates on the vulnerability of the former president at this time -- not upon the million plus deaths his odious South East Asian policy induced. You soon realise however this is a portrait not of individuals but of politics and its loyal satellite, television news media and the symbiosis they share. Nixon, played with majestic calm by Frank Langella, and Frost recreated convincingly by jobbing chameleon Michael Sheen, go toe to toe like old prizefighters with reputations to not restore but resurrect.

NB: runs till 07/10.

Depending on your threshold for Hollywood antics in contemporary art, Francesco Vezzoli's Trailer For A Remake Of Gore Vidal's "Caligula" (2005), a visual onslaught of sexy imagery for a film that doesn't exist, was a hit or a miss on the most recent Biennale circuit. Mark Wallinger's The End, a series of credits for a film which not only doesn't exist, but is never even named, is the antithesis of Vezzoli's project, consisting simply of twelve minutes of rolling credits against a black screen. However, Wallinger's non-existent film, which stars God, Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel in the beginning and Jacob, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus at the end (names appear in order of appearance), definitely rivals Vezzoli's non-existent film in scale, dramatic import and epic nature. Also on display is Wallinger's A Ist Fur Alles (2005), which consists of a Barcelona day bed, a Bauhaus design icon, accompanied by the sounds of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which was founded by Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim to bring Arab and Jewish musicians together. The bed is also, apparently, a marriage of Eastern and Western forms. It's a shame, however, that the majestic serenity inspired by the form of A Ist Fur Alless is somewhat overshadowed by a game of untangling cultural references.

NB: runs till 15/10 (The End will be screened at 11am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm from Tue to Sat and, where possible, by request).

With his Leica, his cap and his legendary good vibe Rene Burri has roamed the planet in search of that decisive moment for the last 50 years. During his travels he took some of the most arresting images of the 21st century... men on a roof top in Sao Paolo (1960), Che Guevara smoking his beloved Habanos, at the Ministry of Industry in Havana (1963) and Pablo Picasso at the villa La Californie, South of France (1957), who refused to be snapped by the master only to cave in on the fifth attempt. Born in Switzerland in 1933, Burri described his drive as an immense curiosity to race ahead and see beyond his native mountain peaks. Throughout his career he remained very influenced by Werner Bischof, who introduced him to the prestigious Magnum photographic agency where he became a full member in 1959, and by Henri-Cartier Bresson. This mini-retrospective at the Atlas Gallery, to be followed by a major exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery (23/09 till 12/11), is the first of its kind in the UK. A must-see for all you photographic aficionados wanting to peak into the mind and soul of an iconic and legendary photographer.

NB: runs till 04/11.

"F*ck you" is probably the most succinct summation of the various gestures Chris Burden has produced in his 30-odd years of making art. From early performances like 747 (1973), in which he fired several shots at one of the eponymous planes, to his gallery crushing device Samson (1985), if one thing has changed over the years it definitely hasn't been the sentiment. But now, with his show at the SLG consisting of 14 Magnolia Double Lamps pleasantly installed in the gallery, one may ask where the instigation has gone. Fret not, for while there may not be the overt threat of pendulum blades or alligator pits, Burden's delicate and masterful grasp of the irony of shipping 20 tons' worth of battleship grey European-inspired 1920s American design back to England should be enough to let us know how he feels. And just in case it's not, make the trek over to Tate Britain where starting on 02/10 you can stand under The Flying Steamroller and contemplate the magic of engineered misanthropy. No, it would seem Mr Burden has not so much mellowed with age as developed ever-more polite ways of telling us to go f*ck ourselves.

NB: runs till 05/11.

Talk: on 12/10 (6:30pm) catch Chris Burden as he chats with Margot Heller (director of the SLG) at Tate Modern.

An autumnal arrival that soundtracks the darkening evenings, fallen leaves and heavy coated walks across the park. Together Keiron Phelan and our very own David Sheppard (both of whom also record as State River Widening) have created a gorgeously fluent musical conversation that tells stories of an imagined past in our present, using a soft collision of acoustic guitars, percussion, double bass, viola, electronic scratches, nestling against melancholic strings and sweetly evocative vocals from Spanish singer Ines Naranjo. Echoes of Nick Drake sipping camomile tea with Max Richter, while Paris, Texas plays on DVD, and Ennio Morricone waters the garden. This album offers a cinematic and charmingly seductive walk across a musical landscape that leaves one feeling refreshed, dreamy and out of step with time.

To buy Harps Old Master online click here.

KultureFlash is a free, weekly newsletter covering contemporary culture in and around London. Each week we track down some of the more unusual and interesting events taking place in the capital and deliver them straight to your inbox. Featuring art, gigs, films, talks, clubs and more -- we are committed to bringing you an eclectic mix of the most stimulating events in London.

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