The London premiere of experimental/political filmmaker John Gianvito's (The Mad Songs Of Fernanda Hussein) latest film Profit Motive And The Whispering Wind, which chronicles the history of Leftist struggle in America, serves to remind us that things were not always better in the "old days" -- the battle for justice and equality is ageless. Although a chronological record of 400 years of often violent and bloody conflict for the rights of the "common man", the film itself is a quietly poetic essay. Loosely based on Howard Zinn's book A People's History Of The United States, and similar in spirit and style to fellow essayist filmmaker James Benning's documentary compositions (13 Lakes, 10 Skies) the film is narration-free and composed of largely static shots of historical monuments, pilgrimage places and gravestones, all commemorating those who met their end struggling for equality. From colonial times, through industrialisation and civil rights, it is a record of American history as shown through its internal battles: commemorating those in the "home of the brave" that were sacrificed to ensure "the land of the free".

NB: this film is being screened as part of an event to launch the latest issue of Vertigo. Other films of note this week are The Killers, Annie Leibovitz: Life Through A Lens and Away From Her.

Times were when Rotozaza were one of the regular fixtures of London's theatre / performance circuit. Not so lately with their shows playing more and more internationally. It is therefore a welcome chance to see them re-stage their theatre piece Five In The Morning at the Shunt Vaults. The show is a three-hander that sees Silvia Mercuriali, Greg McLaren and Melanie Wilson as guest performers in swimming costumes who plunge into a performance that flips between quasi-psychological experiment routines and imagery from the unconscious. Director Ant Hampton has them perform with zest and cunning in equal measure in this piece that continually asks the question, who is controlled by whom? As a spectator you watch, piecing together the different elements of the show, looking out for the fine lines that it shifts across when the roles of performer, experimenter and audience become increasingly confused. Without ever spelling out a message, Rotozaza summon up a world in fragile, complex and unstable images, like the memory of a convoluted dream from which you have awakened.

NB: Five In The Morning is performed on both 13/02 and 14/02.

That this biopic of celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz is produced, directed and written by her sister Barbara is a mixed blessing. While it's something of a shameless hagiography, the exclusive access that only a sister could have guaranteed is a definite plus. The camera is welcomed into Leibovitz's coterie with ease; we are taken on shoots with Keira Knightley dressed as Dorothy in Oz, with Kirsten Dunst in full Marie Antoinette regalia and with George Clooney lost at sea. For those who are Vanity Fair devotees, and know the pictures, the behind-the-scenes footage is fascinating. Leibovitz's iconic contributions to the magazine (Demi Moore pregnant and naked; the infamous Hollywood issue covers), plus her trailblazing work for Rolling Stone in the '70s and early '80s (a naked John Lennon wrapped in a foetal position around a clothed Yoko Ono) makes her one of the architects of the celebrity culture that permeates (and arguably structures) society today. The film also touches upon Leibovitz's home life: her nomadic childhood, her intimate relationship with Susan Sontag, her war reportage and finally her children. It's by no means the full picture, but it's a presentation of a woman whose perception, vision and documentation of the world is inspiring and undeniably influential.

NB: Annie Leibovitz: Life Through A Lens screens at the ICA till 16/03. Other films of note this week are The Killers, Profit Motive And The Whispering Wind and Away From Her.

Illuminator of the rooms in Ian Shrager's St Martins Lane, the 2003 Venice Biennale, post-modern icon Lloyds of London, exterior of Selfridges, and the new 800-seater Airbus A380 unveiled last spring, Arnold Chan has a varied portfolio. He is more an engineer than a lighting designer -- his work has a physicality that betrays his architect's training. Isometrix is responsible for the revamp of many of our urban spaces, and has been a presence in some of the most exciting design projects of the last 22 years since it was set up in 1985. Its founder Chan will be talking about the ways technology is changing the frontline of design, and about his unique design process. How many designers does it take to change a lightbulb? Just the one if it's Arnold Chan.

NB: also of note at the Design Museum is the Jean Prouve retrospective (runs till 13/04).

Corsica Studios has steadily made a name for itself over the past year and a bit as a haven for messy electronic offerings: the combination of a killer soundsystem and the venue's rough hewn, barely legal vibe has made for some great nights. This Saturday it's the turn of the venue's own in-house electronica night, An Electric Storm, to shine and to this effect they have St Albans' finest, Clark, headlining. Fresh from releasing his fourth album for Warp Records, Turning Dragon, an incredibly hefty set of dancefloor-orientated tracks, Clark has cemented his reputation as one of the most forward-thinking artists working in the electronica scene today. Topping up the bill is a double live-set deustcher whammy with Berliners Khan and Electronicat, over here to spread some efficiently teutonic electro, plus DJ sets from both Kosmische and Warp DJs.

Imagine it's 1968 and you're off to London's UFO Club for a bit of hip new music -- chances are you'd wind up wigging out either to Pink Floyd or AMM, both of whom used to perform sets of improvised music for audiences whose minds were "liberated by the spirit of the times". Fast forward to 2008 and Pink Floyd have just about managed to keep their lawyers at bay for 20 minutes in order to "get it together" and perform at Live 8, while in the mean time, the members of AMM have helped forge one of the most enduring and inspiring underground movements in British music. Tonight's concert offers the chance to sample that legacy and hear an ensemble of nine highly skilled musicians (Jamie Coleman, Jerry Wigens, Samantha Rebello, Sebastian Lexer, Ross Lambert, Tara Stuckley, Seymoure Wright and Michael Rodgers) including Eddie Prevost of AMM, all come together to improvise music on the spot, as indeed they might do on any other night of the week in any number of locations throughout London. There's no telling how it will turn out, whether Mick Jagger will be there, or what exactly will make it special, but this, perhaps, is exactly the point.

Double act Ridiculusmus have always felt like the cleverest stupid kids of British theatre, so it's exciting to see them hitting their fifteenth year together like elder statesmen. The Barbican marks their birthday with a retrospective of a few of their greatest hits alongside a brand new show. Memories of Yes, Yes, Yes (08/03) make fans go dreamy, so it's no surprise this stupefying cross between Being There and deconstructed therapy is already sold out. Say Nothing (23/02) is our favourite so far, a tortuously hilarious travelogue through the Northern Ireland Troubles, played entirely by the duo standing in a small suitcase of turf. How To Be Funny (08/03) promises a performance lecture on comedy; after all, David Haynes and Jon Woods are a live conflagration of screwball, slapstick and the most excruciatingly funny observational wit, so they know what they're talking about. Which leaves new show Tough time, nice time (13/02 till 15/03) promising two naked Germans in a spa in Bangkok, weaving through movies, sex and genocide. It'll be extraordinary.

NB: this retrospective runs till 15/03.

German label Kompakt had something of an annus miraculus last year and the undisputed cherry on the pie was From Here We Go Sublime. This debut album from Swedish producer The Field (aka Axel Willner) managed the near impossible task of crafting ten tracks of tranced-out techno that work equally well on the dancefloor and through headphones (though none of them are the sort of trance you might find on a Trance Nation mix CD). Following a summer showcase at Plastic People last year that was the stuff of legend, it was only a matter of time before Allez Allez got him back over, this time giving him centre stage at their monthly residency at the Amersham Arms. Such a booking only serves to highlight why Allez Allez have been given a ringing endorsement in no less a venerable publication than DJmag. Indeed, in a current climate of countless fluoro-infected electro nights overstaffed with Tarquins playing the latest Crookers remix on their swish new MacBook from the off, it's quite refreshing to see a night that has previously featured guests as varied as Skull Disco, Grovesnor and Optimo and continues to roadblock New Cross.

While regulars Craig Richards and Dave Clarke are keeping Fabric's biggest spaces entertained on Saturday night, you could be forgiven for missing the club's intimate third room. Often perceived as being protected from the giant tractor beam that pulls in the hoards every week, it's beloved of producers -- and often a welcome receptacle for the disorientated or disaffected. This week its additional slight of hand is to host individual members of New York duo Metro Area and veteran UK producers Chicken Lips, so neither of those household names appear on the bill. Brooklyner Morgan Geist, normally the synth, vocally-orientated foil to Darshan Jesrani's bassline-driven grooves, arrives while Metro Area's long awaited 12" 7 is still sinking into playlists with the subtlety that has made tracks like "Orange Alert" sticky over years rather than months. The twisted funk sound claims much of its heritage from San Francisco and New York, although two of its main architects, Harvey and Thomas Bullock (A.R.E. Weapons alumnus and now half of Rub N Tug) were British. Fellow Brit and Bear Entertainment boss Stevie Kotey is a natural heir, having joined Chicken Lips in 2003 and now acting as their DJ-in-chief for tours.

NB: catch Damian Lazarus + Onur Ozer in Room One and Octogen (live) in Room Two.

Permanent Vacation found themselves in pretty much every house DJs collection two summers ago when their reissue of Antena's 1980 electro-samba classic Camino Del Sol was given the star treatment by Joakim and Todd Terje. Since then Munich-based duo Tom Bioly and Benji Froehlich, otherwise known as Only Fools And Horses, have been quietly building themselves a name as purveyors of beautifully-produced deep disco. It's perfect summer music that nods to Balearic and early funky house (before it became such a generic term). Although still a relatively young label, their first compilation was also a notable early adopter of Hot Chip, Glass Candy and the Junior Boys. Praise for Bioly and Froehlich has been plentiful of late, from the likes of Lindstrom, Prins Thomas and Ewan Pearson, who themselves are finally seizing some long-overdue limelight. Just as exciting is the fact that Horsemeat Disco, a staple of discerning South Londoners, has yet to be fatigued by hype. That could all change when they bring Hercules & Love Affair to town on 9th March though. Such is the price of success.

Based on Ernest Hemingway's short story of the same name and directed by the great Robert Siodmak, this is one big, bad, beautiful bag of film noir that completely typifies the genre. The director, having fled the Nazis in the 1930s, was one of the original German Jewish emigres to bring the idea of German Expressionist cinema to the US, grafting it to pulp fiction to create noir -- and this is his crowning glory. We have Ava Gardner as Kitty Kelly, the horniest, nastiest femme fatale that ever sucked on a ciggy; then there's the boxer-turned-gangster and good-hearted hunk, Burt Lancaster, who will have Kitty come what may, while Edmond O'Brien is the crusading investigator. Add to this a cavalcade of some of the best noir villains ever to kick ass including Albert Dekker, William Conrad and Charles McGraw, throw in some of the finest black and white cinematography you are ever likely to see (by Woody Bredell), one of the greatest fight scenes ever filmed (later influencing Scorsese's Raging Bull), set it to Miklos Rozsa's sublime score and the result is a film that is so excruciatingly excellent in every way we come over all odd just thinking about it. If you love film you cannot miss this on the big BFI screen.

NB: The Killers screens at the BFI from 15/02 till 28/02 and is part of the BFI's Burt Lancaster Season (07/02 till 24/03). Other films of note this week are Profit Motive And The Whispering Wind, Annie Leibovitz: Life Through A Lens and Away From Her.

Harold Pinter's The Homecoming first opened on the London stage in 1965 and today almost half a century later it still causes a thrill of excitement and bewilderment when on stage at the Almeida. It is a dark, mysterious and bizarre text that asks a lot of questions but leaves the audience answerless when the curtain goes down. It would be unjust to call The Homecoming a domestic drama, although it is set in the living room of a blank grey post-war house in north London. Pinter's play seems to climb above the domestic; it uses family as a broad metaphor for a male-dominated world and a way into exploring female emancipation. But this is not a play interested in taking sides, rather in dissecting human condition. Max, a retired butcher brilliantly captured by Kenneth Cranham, lives with his two grown-up sons and brother in a bizarre synthesis of patriarchal love and cruelty. Their lives go on with a daily routine of insults and disrespect for each other until the unexpected visit of the third son and his new wife Ruth, whose abstract existence simply deconstructs Max's status quo. A rare dramatic treat.

NB: runs till 22/03. For Harold Pinter fans check out The Lover and The Collection both currently at the Comedy Theatre (till 03/05).

This brilliant show takes visitors on an exhilarating journey through the last 17 years of painting at Chelsea. It charts the influence of its energetic head of painting, Professor Clyde Hopkins, who steered the practice of students at this interdisciplinary college towards success on the contemporary scene. With an openness of spirit, he encouraged painters to embrace life experience as much as the philosophical and anthropological concerns that pervaded the rise of Relational Aesthetics in the '90s. This vibrant sense of experimentation permeates the impressive spectrum of works by alumni at The Arts Gallery on Davies Street, from the dreamy images of Chris Ofili and Peter Doig, to the candid portraits by Chantal Joffe and Nicky Hoberman, and painterly celebration of surface, Ooh La La, by Lucy Moore. In parallel, the Triangle Gallery and Chelsea Future Space focus on the practice of many of the painting tutors, including works by Roger Ackling, Alexis Harding and to name but a few. This lively trialogue not only pays homage to a legendary teacher, it illustrates the ability of staff and students to capture life with the flick of a brush. Quite rightly, painting is the same as it ever was.

NB: ...same as it ever was is spread over three venues, The Arts Gallery (65 Davies St., W1 till 22/02), The Triangle Space (16 John Islip St., SW1 till 02/02) and Chelsea Future Space (Hepworth Court, Gatliff Rd., SW1 till 26/02).

Bedwyr Williams' work presents a mine of lyrical self-depreciation. His exhibition at STORE is filled with small models and vignettes, varying from Segontium, a fetching model gallery complete with mini waterfall (in reality an ancient Roman Fort, the ruins of which can still be found in Caernarfon), to an arrangement of spectacles deep fried in tempura batter and arranged on a plate. Elsewhere visual jokes abound, but a comment chalked near a dartboard detailing the mental state of a man who starts throwing darts while his opponents are pulling theirs from the board suggests the potential for danger latent in any banal social situation. On the web and printed matter in the gallery is a cartoon entitled Artists That Take Risks, in which Williams informs us that he likes "to relax and break the rules from time to time... but I don't want to risk my life or get hurt in any way". This is the nice guy of the exhibition title, gently pricking artistic pretensions of courting danger knowing that, like the young drug-fuelled hooligans who burned his parents' garden shed (here resurrected as another sweet little model), we are likely to have a shed-buying moment at some non-risk taking point in our future lives.

NB: runs till 08/03.

Lawrence Weiner, conceptual art pioneer and frontrunner yet again for the award of Best Beard Of The Year, last week unveiled new wall-based work for this show at Lisson. In 1968 Weiner created a radical manifesto entitled Declaration Of Intent, which stated: "1. The artist may construct the piece. 2. The piece may be fabricated. 3. The piece need not be built" and thus began the artist's fascination with language as a sculptural material. His current show comprises a number of statements meticulously stenciled to the wall in green, black and red tape. These statements read: "A bit beyond what is designated the pale" and "A determination of where what falls offside rests," all rendered in his signature typeface. The conceptual basis of the show is the question: "how many angels can balance on the head of a pin?" Weiner realized some angels would likely fall offside in the middle of such an experiment, and it was this indeterminate space that he set out to explore. Stenciled statements dealing with language connoting similar spaces (pale, offside, aside) take up the two main floors of the gallery, while a mural in the gallery courtyard reading OFFSIDES show this is an artist happy to be working in the gallery's own offside area.

NB: runs till 15/03.

Following last year's sell-out run, Push, the magical and enchanting performance by Sylvie Guillem and Russell Maliphant, returns to London. If you missed them last time, book now! Since its premiere Push has received four major awards, among them an Olivier, a Time Out and the South Bank Show Dance Award. For the first time in the grand settings of the Coliseum, this minimal but strong programme featuring Guillem's solo Two and a duet with Maliphant will most certainly reach dizzy new heights. Also on the bill is Maliphant's signature solo Shift (1996) a romantic and elegiac solo danced by Maliphant and some disappearing shadows. Reflecting the flow and energy between movement and light, the dance pieces are complemented by lighting designed by Maliphant's long-time collaborator Michael Hulls, with music by Shirley Thompson (Shift) and Andrew Cowton (Push). Right from the start this show produces climax-like unforgettable effects, so be prepared.

NB: Sylvie Guillem and Russell Maliphant perform at the Coliseum from 04/04 till 08/04.

One of the most influential avant-garde designers of the 20th century, Alexander Rodchenko was among the vanguard of photographers that shaped the way we use images in the media. Rodchenko's distinctive and hard-hitting visual style has been instrumental in the construction of social identification using visual vernacular: a language formed of visual cues, above and beyond the images themselves. The collection of prints on display at The Hayward have an unnervingly familiar feel about them, as the stalwarts he established forged a permanent bond between photography and consumerism. All references to the ebb and flow of "soviet chic" as a popular flavour in visual culture aside, the groundbreaking features of Rodchenko's work are those that are nearly invisible today as a result of their pervasive application. While the show falls short of the spectral avalanche of Rodchenko-isms and paraphernalia that a die-hard fan might hope for, the body of work selected is strong and demonstrative of his contribution to the modern-day Esperanto that is language of visual culture.

NB: runs till 27/04.

Nominated in 1994 for the Turner Prize, Peter Doig has been an unassuming mainstay on the British art scene ever since and even before that. Born in Edinburgh in 1959, Doig moved to Trinidad and then Canada when he was a child, returning to the UK in 1979 to study in London. This retrospective travels through seven rooms of the artist's work, beginning with canvases produced at college. Mainly landscapes, these paintings show the beginnings of his ability to create the atmosphere of a misty memory that runs through all his work. Another repeated theme is Doig's fascination with the '80s horror film Friday The 13th that, according to the exhibition text, helped him get over his early difficulties with landscapes. The characteristic Doig scenes of lone figures in canoes, also inspired by Friday the 13th, are joined by pastel-coloured snow scenes from Canada, studies on paper revealing his working process, large-scale paintings of a Le Corbusier housing project in France as well as more recent work. Produced since he moved back to Trinidad in 2002, this later work takes in a much darker palette, showing tighter and less decorative scenes but still maintaining the artist's distinctive and characteristic ethereal touch.

NB: runs till 27/04.

It's not so much repressed sexual desire in pre-Swinging Sixties England that's in the spotlight in this pair of Harold Pinter plays, but rather the completely convoluted means of sexual expression evinced. In both plays a regular, suburban couple simply cannot accommodate spicy sexual trysts into their advert-perfect home life. In the first, The Lover, the daily domestic exchanges between the husband and wife are aggressively bright and perky; uncomfortably brittle, you could say; a performance, even. But not the only performance, it turns out, for even as they play-act the perfect husband and wife, they (warning, spoiler...) play-act salacious lovers meeting for a clandestine rendezvous. Can such a relationship of two halves work as a whole? It must. For in the sexually unsympathetic climate of the time, there's a painful schism between domestic and sexual bliss. In the second play, a supposed affair threatens to shatter the domestic harmony of the newlyweds. Two households agitatedly step around the hysterical issue of the sexual misdemeanour. Did it happen? As the situation unravels, homosexual undercurrents pulsate throughout the investigations, highlighting yet another situation for which there is no sexual language (although insinuations ooze from every conversation). Both plays are exquisitely performed; each of the characters negotiates the borders between social, domestic and sexual terrain with appositely excruciating agony.

NB: runs till 03/05. For Harold Pinter fans check out The Homecoming currently at the Almeida Theatre (till 22/03).

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