Sensational Egyptian writer Alaa Al Aswany comes to London to launch the UK publication of his runaway Arab world bestseller, The Yacoubian Building. The controversial book, published in 2002, has been the biggest selling novel in the Middle East for two years, and was made into a film that premiered at last year's Tribeca Film Festival. It was the most expensive Egyptian film ever made. The Yacoubian is an apartment block in downtown Cairo. Taboo themes and a mix of different characters who live in the Yacoubian, both rich and poor, hint that this could be an Egyptian Tales Of The City. This is an exclusive opportunity to hear the writer discuss his novel. Prior to literary success, he was a dentist in Cairo, so maybe he'll discuss that too. Especially as his first dental surgery was located in... the Yacoubian.

NB: this event is free but you need to send an email to events@foyles.co.uk in order to reserve a place.

The fourth feature from Turkish born photographer / director Nuri Bilge Ceylan sketches out the story of Isa, a university teacher who has become bored with his much younger wife, Bahar, and wants the relationship to finish. Nuri takes on the role of lead character while his much younger wife in real life (Ebru Ceylan) takes the role of the much younger wife in the film. Ceylan claims it's not autobiographical but his wife must have taken some convincing. Climates is just like its predecessor, Uzak, using static shots and pared down dialogue that feels like gazing at a series of beautiful photographs on screen. His remarkable economy of style allows him to pull off scenes like a meeting of lovers that in one shot contains more raw passion than a thousand pedestrian sex scenes. Climates' visual impact will plunge deep inside your subconscious and stay there for weeks to come.

NB: Climates is released in London on 09/02. Another film of note released on the same day is My Name Is Albert Ayler. Catch Nuri Bilge Ceylan's exhibition of widescreen photographic landscapes from Climates at the National Theatre (runs till 03/03).

As part of spnm's Second Sight series, spnm artistic director Rolf Hind has programmed a multi-faceted riot of music, with theatrical works performed in events designed by multimedia artist Julia Bardsley. A riot for the senses is created by the remarkable theatricality of Lore Lixenberg, and the unique physicality of BackBeat Percussion Quartet. The programme features Gyorgy Ligeti's stunning song cycle Sippal, dobbal, nadihegeduvel, featuring a massive array of percussive instruments as well as works by Hind, percussionist Damien Harron, and new works written by three of the UK's best up-and-coming composers, Peter Edwards, Paul Fretwell and Claudia Molitor. This all takes place in LSO St Luke's, an 18th-century Grade 1 listed Hawksmoor church which has been stunningly converted into a cutting edge facility for new music and performance. If you're unfamiliar with either the work of spnm or the venue, this is an event not to be missed.

Wim Vandekeybus founded his company Ultima Vez in 1986, and has created Spiegel as a 20th birthday celebration. Comprising choreographic elements from over seven of his past works, the piece stands as a kind of explosive medley that promises to be quite a shock to anyone new to his style. Boundlessly energetic and with an impossible elasticity, his dancers -- some of the best anywhere in Europe -- risk everything as they charge towards each other, leaping through screens and up poles in routines more akin to combat than dance. But the real success of his work, as is often the case with the best dance today, is due to a great use of full-blooded, dynamic music -- Spiegel includes work by David Byrne, Thierry De Mey, Marc Ribot and Peter Vermeersch.

NB: on 09/02 at 4:30pm there will be a screening of Blush, the last full-scale work by Ultima Vez, followed by a Q&A with the director Wim Vandekeybus and then another film, In Spite Of Wishing And Wanting (tickets are £5 or free for show ticket holders but places are limited so pre-book).

The mythical status of exclusivity placed on Hoxton during the apparently halcyon days of the mid '90s by magazines such as The Face may have all but disappeared now, but the Old Blue Last appears to retain some of that buff hype "oh my gosh dust" that has been swept out of the many bars and clubs that surround it. Perhaps it's down to the backers of Vice magazine's pouting and occasionally tiresome fuck everyone attitude, or more likely it's because they choose to work with promoters that look to book music that perplexes, annoys and excites in just the right doses. So when you have Franco-Swedish baile funk / kuduro / electro / club / grime / r'n'b / disco / whatever they feel like playing producers Radioclit teaming up with People Are Germs -- two girls who have played records in all the bars with a licence in east London (and maybe some without) -- you know it's gonna be a night when the girls sweat. Then you add into the mix a hush hush pre Chalk live performance for Canadian hip-hop / disco punk sex jams outfit Chromeo, who will no doubt be testing out some material from their second LP Fancy Footwork, ably assisted by rising MC Mac Mello, you know it's better than a five dollar vanilla milkshake.

With recent headliners including Hellfish, Venetian Snares and A Guy Called Gerald, Bangface has re-established itself as the most eagerly awaited monthly neo-rave explosion of acid, jungle, drum and bass, breakcore, techno and electronica. Yet with the presence of Kid606 and Plaid at the top of the bill, this promises to top any other previous night. Warp Records duo and godfathers of electronica, Plaid are booked to play a mixed set of The Black Dog and Plaid classics. It should be a great opportunity to hear some rarely performed tracks which have helped define electronica in the last 15 years. Kid606 offers an utterly unique fusion of intense breakbeats, coruscating noise and innovative sampling; expect to experience snippets of practically every electronic genre, mixed with a playful sense of humour. Other notables on the bill include live raga dancehall act The Bug and the compelling and intense breakcore act Enduser. The dresscode for this night is superheroes and superheroines, but in the end this night is all about the music and there's no pressure to dress up. Bangface has become an almost peerless institution and for fans of electronic music and, if approached with the right attitude, it's almost impossible not to have a good time.

NB: all advance tickets are sold out, but there should be over 150 tickets available to buy on the door. Early attendance is highly recommended.

Sotto Voce appears to be a mini-festival of extremes -- making use of two rooms of the state51 warehouse; one with non-amplified music, one with amplified music -- juxtaposing the sublime and the brutal alternately in each room. This will also be the long-awaited and first live performance in the UK by the mysterious Aufgehoben -- a secretive project where the band would only ever meet to record in one take and then painstakingly (with an emphasis on pain) manipulate the ADAT tapes, whose only publicly known member for a time was Gary Smith on stereo guitar, who will also be doing a solo set in the resonant space. Also appearing on both stages will be Rhodri Davies, the world's most prominent free-improv harpist who will appear as part of the electronic ensemble Portable on the noisy stage with Angharad Davies, the quieter one. The fantastically named Scandinavian noise duo Testicle Hazard and the incessantly and delightfully messy Birds Of Delay will complete the amplified line-up, whilst the trio of well established free improv players -- Stefano Tedesco, Joe Williamson and Roger Turner -- and the gorgeous finger picking of James Blackshaw complete the line-up for the acoustic stage.

NB: proceeds from this event will go to Resonance FM as they need donations to keep broadcasting.

The sweat has barely dried from the farewell to the legendary Trash and Erol Alkan is back under his not-so-secret moniker Mustapha 3000. Appearing again for Bugged Out -- which prompted Erol to produce his anthemic debut mix in 2005 -- this should be a stomping return for one of the darlings of the indie-electro crossover, with plenty of durrs and stuttery mixes of Justice. Excitement over a Trash reprise could only be overshadowed by those two moustached blokes from Ghent, 2manydjs, who -- not content with the finest bastard pop record ever -- last year distilled their beats into the pulsing, urgent electroclash that was Nite Versions. Anyone who crowded into one of the rather unwieldy Soulwax Weekenders in November will be glad to see them on a smaller and altogether tighter bill. Also worth a look are Man Like Me, the Camdenites who penned the rather catchy electro-poppy "Oh My Gosh" and Nag Nag Nag regular and porcelain doll Jo Jo De Freq for some techno.

No-one bends minds like Wevie Stonder. Ever since their first record Eat Your Own Ears appeared on Skam in 1999 they've issued an unstoppable stream of Dadaist precision chaos inspired by the listlessness of '70s TV and Eastern European gypsy music. They are also legendarily a pretty hard act to follow on stage, managing to insight several episodes of road rage amongst particularly strung out punters during their gabba-core rendition of the rush-hour anthem "Watch Out, There's A Bollard". Their talents for reading the minds of dogs has also been healthily explored in many tracks and short videos, with particularly poignant lyrics referencing the plight of man's wrongly assumed "best friends". With support from $p!tting V!trio4, Muff & Tantrum Special, Cut A Shine with a guest appearance by David Milibum.

Leafing through recent electronica party flyers can be a temporally disorientating experience. With a dearth of new heavyweight acts and the current nostalgia for a rave scene that most never actually experienced, the canny promoter is augmenting the now familiar roll call of Rephlex and Warp artists with a name or two from the dry-ice mists of rave history. London promoters Plex, wise to the game, have struck gold with the headliner to their party this week. With over 20 years experience behind the decks, Eon is one of those names that will ensure a few creaking serotonin depleted veterans will be packing the kids off to the grandparents for the night whilst also finding favour with the hoover sound obsessed youth of today. Filling up the rest of the line-up they have Manchester's Rob Hall, part of the shadowy Autechre related Gescom collective, keeper of the electro flame Ed DMX and a whole host of newer names including Ai's Yellotone and Belfast's Boxcutter, the producer of one of last year's most innovative albums and whose liminal dubstep productions provide a blueprint for the electronica scene's progression once the smiley-acid t-shirts have been mothballed again.

Following Hans Bellmer and Pierre Klossowski's indulgently perverse exhibitions is a tall order, but the Whitechapel Art Gallery's current showing of Margaret Salmon's films more than rises to the occasion. Organised in conjunction with the MaxMara Art Prize for Women, of which Salmon was the first recipient, this exhibition comprises three of the American filmmaker's poignant, incisive portraits of human relationships. Repetitive, almost ritualistic soundtracks are common to many of Salmon's films, at turns motivating and stultifying her subjects. The three Italian women in triptych Ninna Nanna (2006), each in early motherhood, hum a traditional lullaby that overlays the filmmaker's neo-realist camerawork. American hymn "Amazing Grace", sung by the elderly protagonist in Peggy (2003), comes as a sage and courageous address from the bounds of mortality. And PS (2002) dismantles American male mythos, conjoining its realist documentation of a man with audio from a domestic dispute. Further elucidation is to be provided this Sunday by Salmon herself, who will be on hand to discuss any and all matters pertinent to her compelling practice.

NB: this talk is free but booking is essential. Margaret Salmon's films screen at the Whitechapel Art Gallery till 11/02 (so this week is your last chance to see them).

NB: this talk is free but booking is essential. Margaret Salmon's films screen at the Whitechapel Art Gallery till 11/02 (so this week is your last chance to see them).

Seven years in the making from Swedish producer / director / writer Kaspar Collin, this feature doc is clearly a labour of love, making excellent use of archive footage, interviews with family and fellow musicians, and taped recordings of Ayler on Ayler. Albert Ayler was a jazz saxophonist with a vision: to preach a message of "spiritual unity" in his avant-garde-meets-the-blues inspired "free music". Despite the potential complexity of the subject for non-aficionados of this sound, Collin does a skilful job of telling a very clear, linear, yet engaging story and keeps his frame mercifully free of highly stylised dramatic reconstructions, which clutter up so much of today's promo-culture-influenced docs. Ayler was a child musician who dreamt from an early age of creating a different sound. A spell in the army did nothing to diminish his dream, but like all visionaries he had to leave his home(land) and head for Scandinavia in the early '60s to discover his true voice as an artist. Back in New York in the mid-'60s, Ayler was now rubbing shoulders with the likes of Coltrane and building a reputation for himself. But life as an "out-there" prophet of a radical jazz sound was never going to be trouble-free and tragically Ayler died, aged just 34.

NB: My Name Is Albert Ayler is released in London at the ICA on 09/02. Another film of note released on the same day is Climates.

It seems that 21st century cinema has become increasingly dominated by films about, or set in, Africa. Shooting Dogs, The Constant Gardener, The Last King Of Scotland and Blood Diamond all peer closely at African politics and issues -- albeit through a distinctly Northern hemisphere microscope. But where are the African films made by Africans? Just as a revolution took place in American cinema in the '70s, there was a parallel -- but perhaps less well-known -- revolution in filmmaking in sub-Saharan Africa. In 1975 alone classics like Senegal's Xala (Ousmane Sembene), Ethiopia's Harvest 3000 Years (Haile Gerima) and the first film by a black African woman, Letter From My Village (Kaddu Beykat) (Safi Faye) appeared; in the following year came Ceddo (Sembene). These films all tackled similar political topics as the recent ones have -- colonialism, the clash of religions, economic migration and exploitation. The Africa On Film season profiles the birth period of modern African cinema (together with more recent films by Mauritania's Abderrahmane Sissako -- including the upcoming politically-charged Bamako) and gives a rare chance to see the take on these issues through a different set of eyes -- well before Hollywood got all fashionably political.

Q&A: on 12/02 (6:30pm) at the Curzon Mayfair catch the screening of Bamako and the special Q&A with Abderrahmane Sissako, Danny Glover and others.

NB: Africa On Film runs till 18/03 at the Curzon Mayfair, the Renoir Cinema and the Ritzy Cinema.

Psapp are Carim Clasmann and Galia Durant, a London based duo that operate out of a studio in Kings Cross. Their music is a sometimes saccharine jambalaya of folk, electronica, jazz and pop. However, this unique breed of clicks, glitches and airy fairy vocals is accentuated by an adept blending of a variety of instruments, including violins, keyboards, mixing tables and even toys, as well as an ingenious use of sampled sounds. The whole experience rather resembles the mixed bag of a child let loose in a candy shop. In fact, the group is sometimes credited as being amongst, or indeed the, progenitor of "toytronica", which is a musical genre defined by its use of toy instruments. Psapp has put out four EPs and three albums, including the newly released The Only Thing I Ever Wanted. Oh, and did we mention their affinity for felines? Well, this obsession sometimes manifests itself in the form of various stage antics -- no doubt all the more reason this show at the Jazz Cafe is not to be missed.

A (literally) red-hot topic as we spend our (warmest to date) winter alternating between cowering from hurricane-force winds and sipping cappuccino at sunny outdoor cafes, Global Warming is the political issue du jour. Therefore it was only going to be a matter of time before someone came up with a suitable disaster flick a la "Global Warming: The Movie". Surprisingly, An Inconvenient Truth is no bloated CGI extravaganza, but a fact-filled documentary. And to prove the first rule of filmmaking -- make sure you have a great story -- what could have been a dry earnest documentary is actually a gripping, chilling eco-horror film guaranteed to jolt the most complacent of us out of our EasyJet addictions. Based on a presentation by the former US Vice President Al Gore, the pictures really do say a thousand words, and strongly suggest there is a good chance that it will be the floodwaters that are going to get to us long before the terrorists do. This is the first of a 10-week season of free (yes free!) Monday night screenings of political documentaries at the cosy and friendly Roxy in Southwark.

NB: this documentary season runs from 12/02 till 16/04 (others films being screened are: Iraq For Sale, 37 Uses For A Dead Sheep, Empire In The Andes, Mind The Gap, Who Killed The Electric Car?, Outfoxed, Sisters In Law, Tehrani, Celebrity Bubble and Wal-mart, The High Cost of Low Prices).

Takahiko Iimura is perhaps Japan's pre-eminent artist filmmaker of the post-war period, creating an extensive body of work that references both Japanese and international avant-garde tendencies while remaining resolutely personal. Joji Koyama's most recent short film From Nose To Mouth aired on Channel 4 on December 15th and exposed effortlessly the uncanny side of familiar rituals and experiences that surround us. There are odd computer games, bizarre machine translated emails and lots of Max/MSP sound dust, while the lead character is found at various stages playing the recorder with her nose, learning competitive ice skating, and spilling milk from her mouth while cackling inexplicably. It seems that Matthew Barney has been in some respects the harbinger of a particular kind of contemporary cinema, but the ideas that currently inform it come, not from outer space, but from a massive range of inspirations closer to home; television, video games, art, comedy... Some people are open enough to see it all, synthesise it, and put it all in a film. They might just have saved the medium.

It is hard for the brain to comprehend a millennium; Jem Finer's Longplayer created with Artangel is something substantial to help make sense of that span of time. The Longplayer installation at Trinity Buoy Wharf is still a seven-year old stripling, as is the complementary Longplayer Conversation (with 993 years to go there is no need to rush). Two years ago Laurie Anderson and Doris Lessing got started talking about the science and art of time, and this year Bruce Mau and David Adjaye continue. The premise for Longplayer is that no ears mortal or omnipotent ever hear a part of the work twice, and the Conversation theory is that Mau and Adjaye are aware of each other's work but have not met, though judging by the difference in their practice one wouldn't blame them for a sneaky preparatory chat. Adjaye is the darling of East End architecture, and buildings from artists' homes to libraries are concrete proof of his skill; Mau, on the other hand, is one for grand ideas and altogether more ethereal outcomes. Will they find food for thought for the next two years? Whatever one may think of Artangel's recent curatorial approach, credit is due for their ongoing engagement with the Longplayer project.

NB: David Adjaye is currently exhibiting new work at Albion (till 01/03).

A2 are Alit Kreiz and Anton Mirto -- two extraordinarily poignant performers who never fail to engage their audience. Fine-tuned to the human wavelength, A2 capture life's essence and bring to the stage work that is sometimes frightening, sometimes deeply loving, but always sincere. What emotion does persuasion appeal to? Does fear play a leading role? Does fear have a smell? These are questions that she turned her head and looked explores. It is followed by White Noise, a duet by Inter-Fiction that fuses dance, video work and live music in a search for a third way between reality and fiction. With similar preoccupations Catherine Gardner will conclude this identity bender and resolutely female evening with a solo delving into the realms of reality and imagination. Dance, performance, experimental theatre... who knows? Emotions for sure!

NB: this event is part of the Resolution! 2007 festival which runs till 17/02.

Of all the cultural theorists that emerged during a time of exceptional sociological and political strife during the '50s and '60s Stuart Hall's voice has remained a distinctly charismatic and lucid one. He was a frontline major figure in the formation of the new British political left and was a major contributor to Robin Blackburn's New Left Review, now operating as Verso Books. One of his key tenets was that the media appear to reflect reality, whilst in fact they construct it. Great stuff which seems to gain more relevance as time moves on. Born in Kingston Jamaica, Hall's family were Empire Windrush immigrants who settled in Bristol. He later went on to attend Oxford University. Accepting a post at the University of Birmingham in the early '70s, Hall consciously positioned himself at the eye of the storm for what was a tempestuous period in the social and racial history in the UK. At Birmingham he was a key contributor within the centre for contemporary cultural studies. On the night Hall marks his 75th year he can be heard in conversation with Bill Schwartz, an ex pupil, to talk about his life and work on culture, identity and politics.

Two years after the suicide of their youngest son, a prosperous Dublin family return to their little cottage on the West Coast of Ireland for what would have been his 21st birthday. The scene is set for breakdowns, revelations and disaster, but what we get is far more progressive. The play confronts the effects of their grief; we worry less about why the suicide occurred than the way their loss causes their emotions to go into meltdown and then reform in a new way. As a result, it's a clash of stoicism, anger, silence, self-punishment and maniacal glee, fuelled by ancient suspicion, ritual and custom. Performances from the two matriarchs are the schematic bookends of the piece; a tight-lipped Imelda Staunton clutches onto her emotional reins in fear for her life, and a barking Eileen Atkins trips the light fantastic in her own fairieland. It's an interesting pairing, especially as the former increasingly distances herself from scholarly Dublin (her working world) and retreats into a belief system based on folklore, myth and curses. Suicide isn't usually a subject for a jolly night out, but Frank McGuiness' latest theatrical offering provokes, challenges and confounds expectation enough to make for a surprisingly entertaining evening.

NB: runs till 03/03.

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