Back in the days of silent cinema, films were usually accompanied by a pianist, usually reacting to what was going on screen with improvised gestures -- now all the music is usually pre-recorded. However, at The Coronet, where Charlie Chaplin once trod the boards himself, sees the screening of three of his classic films -- The Immigrant, Easy Street and The Adventurer -- complete with a live soundtrack provided by the London Sinfonietta, scored by Benedict Mason. The live soundtrack, however, should set this apart from a normal Chaplin screening; the composed elements of the music not only complement the films but also alter the context in which they are seen, often adding additional humour, surrealism or turning the tone of some scenes completely on its head. The screening will be preceded by free electronics performances and installations by students at the London College of Communication, including the Unknown Devices Laptop Orchestra led by David Toop.

NB: this show is part of a country-wide tour, still to call at Manchester, Perth and Sheffield.

There's somewhat of a sledgehammer and gnat situation being set up at the Dana Centre -- not use of disproportionate might to solve a simple problem, but rather the hope that with diminutive means some serious issues and myths can be cracked. Members of the audience in the Dana Centre Cafe as well as those online will be invited to put their questions regarding sex -- physical, emotional, cultural or drugs-related -- to a panel of sexperts who will answer their 160 character queries. Don't mind the nasty neologism, as this panel has quite a pedigree and includes a former Director of the Kinsey Institute for Research into Sex, Gender and Reproduction in the US and Dr Roy Levin from the University of Sheffield, awarded a gold medal for lifetime services to sexology and women's sexual health by the World Association of Sexology's 17th International Congress at Montreal in 2005. In the company of great minds on the subject, it seems a shame that the limited but anonymous medium of texting is required to get the ball rolling, but we are in England...

NB: the event is free but places must be booked by calling 020.7942.4040 or emailing tickets@danacentre.org.uk.

Los Olividados (1950), literally translated as "The Forgotten", was the film that re-established Luis Bunuel's reputation after nearly 20 years in the critical wilderness. Set in the slums of Mexico City, it follows the crime-filled and violent lives of a group of juvenile delinquents who go around mugging, robbing and inflicting cruelty on everyone who crosses their path. Unsentimental in its depiction of both the kids and the society that bred them, the film provoked a furious reaction in Mexico when it was released but won acclaim for Bunuel abroad, winning him the best director prize at the 1951 Cannes Film Festival. Although reminiscent in style of the Italian Neorealists, Bunuel's unique surrealist vision goes deeper, most memorably in a disturbing and justly famous dream sequence. As both a work of social and imaginative might, Los Olivadados is a masterpiece of world cinema that went on to influence many modern classics including A Clockwork Orange and City Of God.

NB: Los Olividados screens at the NFT till 08/03 and is part of the Luis Bunuel season that also runs till 08/03.

The problem with most UK rappers is that they labour under the mistaken belief that they have a chance of making it in the USA. With one eye on the big prize and the prospect of a life spent quaffing Champagne in Jacuzzis with P Diddy, it's all too easy to play it safe. Safe, though, is not a word you'd associate with Big Dada's Infinte Livez, with songs that touch on themes like having sex with a My Little Pony doll and a chaotic stage show involving one of the few puppet hype-men in hip-hop history; drearily obsessed with notions of realness he isn't. Tonight he's celebrating the release of Art Brut Fe De Yoot, a collaboration with Swiss electro producers Stade, and an album unlikely to feature in any of Tim Westwood's end of year charts and all the better for it. Emphasising that this is no normal hip-hop show is the choice of support act, Adaadat's DJ Scotch Egg. One of the most bizarre live performances you'll see this year, Scotch Egg blasts insane 200 BPM techno out of his circuit bent Gameboys whilst abusing the crowd through a megaphone and pelting them with his savoury namesakes. Sure to be a memorable night at least.

Edward Norton can be inexplicably boring in Q&As, intellectually droning on to mass indifference, but on screen his captive presence is without doubt. In The Illusionist he excels as Eisenheim, a mysterious magician who transfixes monocled up audiences in 19th century Vienna by bending the laws of nature way beyond that of the usual visual legerdemain. Far superior to The Prestige, which covered similar ground, the overriding appeal certainly isn't with the ham acting of Paul Giamatti or the faux innocence of Jessica Biel. Norton, with a startling netherworld Austrian accent, is the reason to see this, performing stony faced tricks for applauding audiences and then one day for the Prince (Rufus Sewell) who he completely humiliates. No-one likes a magic man making them look stupid and so the Hollywood movie formula kicks in at this point. Thankfully Norton marshals it with his towering performance.

From stop-animation to highly sophisticated digital techniques, animation has long been the only way to represent things that tended to defy the limits of imagination. Cinema has been making use of animation from its inception and now science, medicine and architecture count among the disciplines that have harnessed its potential. Indeed, it is now common to virtually visit a building before it's been built, the opportunity to observe the mating rituals of micro-organisms invisible to the human eye is no longer the stuff of science fiction and it is now possible to make the most surreal films without having to worry about the limitations of human actors. Wasn't Keanu Reeves a whole lot more convincing as an animated character in A Scanner Darkly? Of course, artists have been among the first to mobilise the great powers of animation. This international conference assembles speakers who hail from various fields of research and practice, such as Lisa Cartwright, Tom Gunning, Johnny Hardstaff, Norman Klein, Anthony McCall, Michael Snow and Vivian Sobchack in order to generate what will hopefully be a productive dialogue focusing on potential future developments and the ethical responsibilities of animation.

NB: this symposium runs from 02/03 till 04/03 and has been programmed in conjunction with Parasol unit's big animation survey show Momentary Momentum: Animated Drawings that opens this week (private view 02/03 6 - 8pm). On 02/03 at Tate the opening panel discussion is followed by a presentation of Anthony McCall's Line Describing A Cone (1973), a potent demonstration of a truly original use of animation in its simplest expression.

Marcel Carne's 1945 feature tops critics' and viewers' polls time after time and rightfully deserves its place here in the Barbican's 25th Birthday Film Season. Set in the popular mime theatres of 1830s Paris, the film follows the troubled lives of the mime Baptiste (Jean-Louis Barrault), actress Garance (Arletty) and her circle of admirers. The action takes place both on and offstage and so there is a continual movement between cinematic and theatrical styles of acting and the constant presence of an audience. This story within a story quality is made more interesting still by the fact that Les enfant du paradis was filmed during Nazi occupation and the film draws necessarily subtle allegories that connect the two periods of Parisian life. The themes of power, censorship, idealism and frustration lend the film much of its pathos. Beautifully lit and superbly acted by a cast with an incredible depth of talent, it is not a minute too long at 195 minutes.

NB this screening is part of the Barbican's 25th Birthday Film Season (runs from 01/03 till 10/03). Other classic films being screened include: The Third Man (01/03), Some Like It Hot (03/03), The Godfather trilogy (04/03), Taxi Driver (05/03), The Seventh Samurai (06/03), Vertigo (07/03) and Dr Strangelove (08/03).

A middle aged "Celtic Tiger" couple all dressed in white fall onto their knees and bury their hands in the huge heap of soil that covers the entire stage. A striking image that embodies the conflicts that are at the core of The Bull; the old and the new, the pure and the dirty, the wealthy and the pauper, the peace and the violence. Spurred by discovering that she is less wealthy than her husband to the value of a prize bull, the woman starts her quest to redress the balance, by acquiring a peasant family's beast. She gradually mutates into a maniac guided only by her unrelenting desire to prove herself. By the end all the characters have been brutally murdered and they all creep back onto the stage a la Michael Jackson's Thriller, only without the thrill. But a pastiche of "traditional" Irish dance, performed by an "ex-Riverdancer", produces laughter and to the rhythm of dramatic live drums and supported by a multi-talented cast the action unfurls across the Irish peat like a bullfight in a Spanish arena. High in energy and visually arresting this is a very physical-theatre piece.

NB: runs from 28/03 till 03/03.

Slaang is a four-part warehouse frolic from the guys behind Issst, a brand that already has European techno pedigree as the brainchild of Berliners Tiefschwarz and has attracted cult names DJ Hell and Alan Braxe, even claiming to have given Braxe his debut gig. Despite the glut of guitars / beats crossovers, these guys are a touch more serious and Germanic about it; don't expect a love-in for the indie bands -- there will be messy dancing and they're not afraid to scare you. Black Strobe's Arnaud Rebotini errs on the dark side, applying some heavy beats when rearranging Depeche Mode and The Rapture into punky disco. Pop relief is unlikely from the Futureheads, who've discovered their scrapyard-esque punk guitars are easily bent out of shape by German turntablists. The quirky and energetic Mystery Jets have been linked most recently with Erol Alkan, who inspired Justice to transmogrify "You Can't Fool Me Dennis", thus ensuring them plenty of airtime. There's more DJing from the guitar-bashing Friendly Fires, who caused a bit of a storm a couple of weeks ago alongside Metronomy. In case we hadn't quite name-checked enough, Tiga will have his eyes on proteges Sweetlight, who'll be glitching their way through, nodding to Ghent and Paris.

Keen readers of KF may have noticed that Fabric has been covered in some depth recently, thanks to a booking policy which heads away from mainstream crowd-pleasing superstar DJs to focus on some alternative and eclectic selections. Think what you like about the venue, there's no denying that the opportunity to experience DJs and acts playing on the club's staggering sound system is not to be sniffed at. This night is no exception; co-headliner Luciano is joined by Rhythm & Sound -- an alter-ego of German techno minimalists Basic Channel (the hugely influential duo of Mark Ernestus and Moritz von Oswald) -- to form the main attraction in a line-up whose styles lean rather heavily towards the experimental. R&S's dark, spaced-out excursions into lean techno with a heavy dub influence are complemented by a DJ set from ex-raver turned dubstep sonic terrorist Kode9, whose work with vocalist The Spaceape is rather more metronomic than a lot of the skittering, garage-influenced beats found elsewhere in the genre (even his own label, Hyperdub). Electroheads can also find scene don Anthony Rother (live) in room two and Henrick Schwartz (live) and Trickski in room three; varied doesn't even begin to cover it.

Sofia Coppola's biopic of Marie Antoinette (starring kookie kid Kirsten Dunst) was the opulent, sumptuous extravaganza of 2006, and if you missed it, make time for this special screening. Sure the film is out on DVD, but it's such a decadent epic, there's no way home cinema could ever do justice to the frenzied concentration of ostentatious abundance, riotous indulgence and libertine excess. The film's fact-light, impressionistic interpretation of events was a contentious, controversial move, but one that's a recurring issue with any historicisation of a royal personage. The screening is linked with the Royal Academy's current exhibition, Citizens And Kings, and is followed by a discussion between RA Magazine editor Sarah Greenberg and Lady Antonia Fraser, whose brilliant, best-selling biography of the ill-fated French queen inspired Coppola. With a biography back catalogue of royals that beggars belief, Fraser is the woman to quiz about the whys, hows and wherefores of making or breaking blue-blooded icons.

NB: this event has been programmed in conjunction with Citizens And Kings: Portraits In the Age Of Revolution, 1760 - 1830 at the Royal Academy.

As an introduction to the films of Todd Haynes (Velvet Goldmine, Safe) Professor Richard Dyer will discuss Haynes' 2002 film Far From Heaven. With Far From Heaven Haynes makes a direct homage to Douglas Sirk, master of '50s melodramatic weepies including Written On The Wind and Imitation Of Life -- films which tackled social taboos in a humanist and female-centred way and, although critically panned at the time, were wildly successful with audiences. In this remake of the May-September, cross-class romance All That Heaven Allows, Sirk's signature lush saturated colours, dramatic lighting and emotionally-charged scenes have all been retained. However, changes have updated the story to include issues that even Sirk would not have been allowed to tackle. Julianne Moore plays the Jane Wyman character whose perfect life gradually crumbles around her due to gossip, racism and homophobia, while Dennis Haysbert (24's president David Palmer) takes the Rock Hudson role. Beautifully photographed (it was nominated for an Oscar for Cinematography) with gorgeous '50s costumes (look out for the Christmas party hostess dress) and a lush musical score, the film is a serious contender for masterpiece status. Just remember to take some tissues.

Peter Coffin's appropriation of works by Auguste Rodin, Alberto Giacometti, Sol LeWitt and Jeff Koons, among others, are humorously re-staged in front of epic movie-style films of dramatic landscapes. Around, About Expanded Field (2007) is an installation comprising of literal "cut outs" from the canon of art history: Koons' Rabbit (1986) is reassembled for a contemporary audience as a black-painted MDF prop and positioned in front of the screen, made to resemble the comical puppet-style silhouettes thrown when playing with hand-shapes in front of a projector. The permanence of Koons' original sculpture -- as with all of Coffin's historical references to painting and sculpture -- is juxtaposed with the moving images projected on the back wall, wrenching the work out of the past and plonking it in front of an ever-moving present, where the works of art are themselves lined up as viewers of the film. Showing in the rear gallery, Untitled (One Minute Breach) (2006) is a mesmerising video showing a rotating shot of a whale breaking the surface of the sea. On a one minute loop, the idea of a transient temporality also resurfaces here.

NB: runs till 04/03.

One of the founders of 1960s iconoclasts Archigram and current joint Professor of Architecture in the Royal Academy Schools Peter Cook will be talking about how the act of drawing relates to the conceptual moment in architecture, the point when the movement of the mind or the hand is rooted to its physicality and ability to manipulate a medium. This debate echoes the concern with starchitects and statement buildings played out on a world stage by projects like the Guggenheim Bilbao or the recently opened cultural land-grab MIMA, and shock-and-awe techniques in art. What's an authentic response? What's technical skill and what's genius? Both disciplines have a moment of committing to physicality; this is one of the parallels between them. Cook will make this case with reference to the sleight-of-hand seen in the work of Lebbeus Woods, CJ Lim, Zaha Hadid and in his own oeuvre. (These drawings are displayed on the Royal Academy's Ramp.) Cook's consummate style ensures the event will go off with panache; go!

NB: for those of you who cannot make it catch Peter Cook at the V&A on 09/03 (4pm) as he gives the 19th Reyner Banham Memorial Lecture.

For nearly two decades Thomas Hirschhorn has been a conduit of the unspeakable, channelling mass society's excessive drives and impulses into an ever expanding sculptural oeuvre formed from the darker waste products of our complex collective history. A distressing fusion of the obscene and the everyday, his recent overwhelming installations inject moving images of hardcore porn and war atrocities into the banal stuff of our consumer existence, assembled in ramshackle constructions held together with packaging tape, cardboard, and photocopied political texts both canonical and everyday. Prefiguring our current desire for art to engage with social and political tensions, his influential output has earned him the label of being a social and political artist -- to this he has simply responded "I am not a social worker". Nevertheless, in more recent projects such as Musee Precaire Albinet, he has demonstrated a shift away from spectacular superstructures towards what could be deemed as social engagement. As part of the Hayward Gallery's 100 Ideas series he discusses the Musee Precaire Albinet and other projects with the gallery's director Ralph Rugoff in what promises to be a relevant and indeed most timely discussion.

NB: this talk has been programmed in conjunction with Thomas Hirschhorn's exhibition at the Stephen Friedman Gallery which opens on 09/03 and runs till 07/04 (private view on 08/03 from 6 - 8pm).

The next snappy jingle to ring in your ears, holding far greater weight and prestige than its catchy cousins "Snap, Crackle and Pop" will be "Rip, Crunch and Splat", not, as it turns out a plastic like tasting breakfast cereal but the buzz words of physics, to spout with authority to an unassuming audience who you wish to impress with your scientific flair. The rip, crunch, splat triptych describe three of the contesting theories that account for how the universe will end. Whether following the modal of a rapidly expanding universe whose momentum causes a cataclysmic tear, or of the contraction of the universe in a reversal mode so that it implodes, existence as we know it precariously rests on a knife edge, where all three foresee an end that is loud, violent and final. Science author aficionado Dr John Gribbin will helps us navigate through science's exclamations to the biggest what, when, who's and how's; planetary forecasting with a difference. Educated as an astrophysicist at Cambridge, Gribbin has had a prolific career as a science writer, his most famous textual contribution being In Search Of Schrodinger's Cat, alongside his regular contribution to the science pages of the Times, Guardian and Independent.

For all of you experimental undie music fans out there, and for any of you prog rockers who have been hiding in a closet somewhere waiting for it to be cool again to bust out those Tangerine Dream records, have no fear, The USA Is A Monster is here! Asking the tough questions about "The Greatest Mystery", and locked into their own unique stylings that could be described as a kind of Jethro Tull meets Lightning Bolt fusion of noise and optimistic prog rock, TUIAM returns to The Windmill for another night of pure entertainment. An intimate and understated venue, The Windmill offers and up-close and personal experience of the Brooklyn hippie-rockers who have come to present their new album Sunset At The End Of The Industrial Age. Not quite as epic as Wohaw, Sunset has a lighter feel to it. With a less severe and bare-bones sound, the overall effect is a little more rock than its over-simplified predecessor. There are some seriously catchy melodies on the album, and TUIAM is always good live -- no funny stuff, just damn fine music. As The Windmill is a very cosy venue indeed, we recommend you snap those tickets up quick.

When Gautam Malkani's book Londonstani was published last year it reached out through a post Clockwork Orange street-talk to an expansive audience. Confounding and bewitching readers in equal measure it also acted as the spur towards Faultline, the explosive new work by choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh. Applying athletic movement taken from martial arts and ballet, and riffing on the body language of restless Asian youths, also mirrored on film here (commissioned from conceptual film artist Pete Gomes), the work hovers as if in suspended animation. Each performance features the icy pristine voice of Indian soprano Patricia Rozario embedded in a stirring symphonic score by Scanner, projecting a world of mesmeric beauty caught in the shadow of a dark suggestive force. The second piece Exit No Exit is accompanied by live music composed by Michael Nyman.

NB: Faultline and Exit No Exit are performed on both 06/03 and 07/03.

Move over Peter Burger. If Asparagus: A Horticultural Ballet is any indication, the avant-garde has just found itself a new best friend. Forging a cosmic link between high-culture dance and mass-cultural produce, Pil and Galia Kollectiv's latest gesamtkunstwerk promises to be an exercise in heady, countercultural mythmaking. The duo here cast a characteristically broad, historical net, drawing upon everything from the choreographic abstractions of Oskar Schlemmer's Triadic Ballet (1922) to a late-1970s, interdisciplinary gem from which the Kollectiv derives their piece's title. No documentation of the latter exists, though creator Waw Pierogi's subsequent membership in minimal synth outfit xex (based in New Jersey, of all places) suffices to secure it a place in the obscurantist annals. Les Georges Leningrad is clearly a fan; the delightfully unruly Quebecois band developed a score, incorporating xex's music, which it will perform live for the ballet's premiere at Conway Hall. Costumes from the production and a behind-the-scenes pseudo-documentary will also be on display for the following month at The Showroom. Anyone ever reduced to a vegetative state after reading Marx's Das Kapital should consider the growth of capital -- as illustrated by a hopping asparagus -- and delight.

NB: this performance has been programmed in conjunction with Pil and Galia Kollectiv's exhibition at The Showroom (runs from 07/03 till 15/04).

Humanity in all its humour and horror is explored in two exhibitions by Jake and Dinos Chapman currently on show in London. When Humans Walked The Earth, installed at Tate Britain, is a series of bronze sculptures depicting decapitated heads, dismembered genitalia and excavated brains spliced with machinery. The results resemble an army of human machines, waiting for the massacre to begin. Indeed, the impending scene of torture appears to be a self inflicted one, with hammers and drills juxtaposed with body parts in a frenzied representation of schizophrenic self-harm. We are gruesomely reminded of humanity's capability of self-destruction, not least in war.

Compare this to the seeming childishness of the Chapmans' other exhibition, Two Legs Bad, Four Legs Good, on show at Paradise Row. Met by an array of sculptures of farmyard animals made from loo rolls and poster paint, a deliberately primitive vision is crudely evoked. But all thoughts of childish simplicity are continuously drowned out by the audio adaptation of Animal Farm playing in the corner. For what appears to be a frivolous and rather infantile installation turns out to be about democracy and its defender -- war -- only here war is allegorised as a fairytale, with animals standing in for humans and blood reduced to tomato ketchup tones. In the end both shows are really about mechanistic and animalistic drives, of sex and death, one just says it more artfully than the other.

NB: When Humans Walked The Earth runs at Tate Britain till 10/06 and Two Legs Bad, Four Legs Good runs at Paradise Row till 04/03.

It's five years now since LCD Soundsystem first burst onto the scene with the incredible "Losing My Edge" and it's in large part due to their influence that the kids James Murphy sang about selling their turntables and buying guitars are now back behind the decks. Since that explosive debut they've released their eponymous debut album to critical acclaim, managed to collaborate with Nike without losing any of their credibility and are now are back with their sophomore effort Sound Of Silver. Widely leaked onto the net late last year there should be no lack of familiarity with the new songs and tracks such as "North American Scum" that are already firm favourites in the clubs. Live, the band are always a incendiary proposition, a wall of throbbing bass, analogue synths, percussion and drums, with the iconic James Murphy at the centre holding it all together. Tickets for these London shows will fly out so if you want to see how dance music and rock can be pulled together to create something truly special you'd be advised to book now.

NB: LCD Soundsystem perform at the Astoria on 14/03 and 15/03 (15/03 is already sold out so get your tickets quick for 14/03).

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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