Historian Orlando Figes' magnificent book The Whisperers documents five years of interviews with over a thousand people -- an important record of hundreds of secret family archives from private homes across Russia, detailing life under the tyranny of Stalin. The Soviet Regime promoted proletarians but suppressed social aliens, leading to a universal concealment of family history and manipulation of family records in order to maintain so-called public values. Often married couples would not know their spouses' real origins though incredibly, in spite of the regime, a strong belief in Stalin and the System helped people to survive. Meanwhile, The Economist's Edward Lucas acknowledges that "never in Russian history have so many Russians lived so well and so freely" as today. However, never has Russia posed such a threat to the West. His new book, The New Cold War, highlights Russia's drift towards autocracy with curbs on free speech and fair elections and the possible involvement of the government in the murders of Anna Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko. Alarmingly, enforced psychiatric treatment of dissidents has also been reintroduced. Furthermore, Europe is already dependent, more or less, on imported gas from Russian pipelines. Imminent scenarios may not only include a hostile disruption to supplies, but also Russia's likely need to keep more gas production for itself. All eyes to Russia's next president, Dmitry Medvedev, on the 2nd March...

NB: another Daunt Books talk of note is Alexander McCall Smith on 06/03 (7pm).

Nottingham quadruplets Late Of The Pier are marked, for better or worse, with some striking birthmarks of the fast-becoming ghastly new rave era. A large "underage" following and the gratis internet release of their Zarcorp Demo makes them an easy paragraph for lazy synopses of that cultural yawn-omenon. But they also reap the benefits of the era -- for one, by securing the production services of the mother-hen of electro-rock, Erol Alkan, without whom (and Trash) these bands wouldn't have gained such a high profile. More recently LOTP's emergence within that family has led to a fruitful liaison with audiovisual young turk Saam, who lent the Klaxons' some Jonzean panache onscreen. In the spirit of that universalist creative palette, singer Samuel Eastgate indulges his glitchy tastes as LA Priest, scoring some success with the track "Engine", favoured by many an Alkan imitator. Most importantly the band's music is cut from a darker, punchy side of the electronic spectrum that's thankfully a hell of a lot more Black Strobe than it is Hadouken!. And, lest we forget, these tykes are from the same Nottingham playgroup that includes the incendiary Friendly Fires. The odds are they'll arouse the sort of nodding, energetic response that greeted The Presets when they played in the very same spot last year.

Thirty years before directing The Dreamers, his Parisian menage a trois starring Louis Garrel, Eva Green and Michael Pitt, Bernardo Bertolucci was exploring similar themes of sexuality, identity and politics in his 1970 masterpiece, The Conformist. Set in Mussolini's Italy, the film, re-released by the BFI, follows Marcello Clerici, a zealous convert to fascism, who is called upon to assassinate his former university tutor and anti-fascist agitator, Professor Quadri. Haunted by a disturbing sexual episode in his childhood, Clerici is determined to repress his emotions and follow a life of conformity. Whilst honeymooning with his suitably ordinary wife, Clerici catches up with Quadri in a decadent, bohemian Paris. Despite his intentions, the young anti-hero is captivated by his former tutor's beautiful, unconventional wife. Though the sexual tension between the couples mirrors that in The Dreamers, the political motivation of Clerici is quite different from the self-absorbed, a-political young cinephiles: he is desperate to be subsumed by the crowd and unquestioningly obey. Shot by Vittorio Storaro, the cinematography creates a wonderful atmosphere of claustrophobia while the grand architectural sets perfectly capture the alluring and intimidating fascist aesthetic.

NB: The Conformist screens at the BFI till 21/03. Also of note this week is the release on 29/02 of Margot At The Wedding and Lars von Trier's The Boss of It All.

To mark the imminent release of the new English-language version of Michael Haneke's Funny Games, the Cine Lumiere is presenting a complete retrospective of the Austrian director's films. A decade after the original German version of Funny Games was made, Haneke has replicated the film -- shot by shot -- into an American setting, what he views as the film's ideal milieu. An incisive critic of modern life and society, Haneke excels in making films that challenge the viewer's (and by extension -- society's) moralities and perceptions on a range of often contentious issues, including sexual relationships (The Piano Teacher) immigration (Code Unknown), violence (Benny's Video and Funny Games) and the rise in CCTV (Hidden). His films consistently pose questions -- subverting the Hollywood conventions of good guy/bad guy, happily-ever-after and good versus evil -- leaving the audience to formulate their own answer. By having his characters directly address the audience he breaks down the usual viewer/viewed relationship, drawing us directly into the narrative and rendering void the excuse that "it's only a movie". Provocative and intelligent, the screenings are paired with relevant and complementary films that tackle related issues.

NB: runs till 09/03. The Funny Games re-make is released in London 04/04. Also of note is the Peter Greenaway and Raoul Ruiz talk at the ICA (19/03).

It's not often that a utility company gets strong-armed into financing a leftfield music festival but that is the situation that Vienna Public Utilities found themselves in when they decided to rip-off a Final Fantasy track for an advert. With the threat of legal action looming, the VPU offered to fund Owen Pallett's Maximum Black Festival and so this three city (Vienna, London and Berlin) event was born, probably not what the marketing department in Vienna envisaged but good news for us. So what does a sack full of Viennese hush money buy you these days? Well, first up you have Pallett himself in his Final Fantasy guise, a one-man orchestra with his violin and bank of delay pedals; joining him are likes of Dirty Projectors, otherwise known as Dave Longstreth and currently gaining many column inches as the mentor to current indie band du jour Vampire Weekend and several other sonically challenging artists including Sunn 0))) guitarist Stephen O'Malley and the wonderfully named Frog Eyes. Hopefully this is just the start of a trend and next week we can look forward to Powergen sponsoring an eight-hour Aphex Twin concert in Battersea Power Station.

Margot (Nicole Kidman) is a New York fiction writer -- highly successful, but excruciatingly egocentric. The wedding is that of her estranged sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to a Class A deadbeat (played with slacker panache by Jack Black). Margot storms into their comfortable idler idyll as only a self-involved, shit-stirring elder sister can. It's a bit like the archetypal prodigal sibling story, except here the returning black sheep is just as amoral as when they left, with the added bonus of however many years of built up resentment to complicate the reunion. It sure makes for one hell of a theatrical weekend, wedding or no wedding. Like The Squid And The Whale, Noah Baumbach's last silver screen offering, this is a piquant study of the interaction of hideously self-centred people. Kidman gives a brilliant portrait of a completely repellent character, whose insecurities feed her manipulative and often malicious nature. That Margot has flashes of regret for her actions only exacerbates the intensity of her cruelty. Such a central character doesn't make for an uplifting, conventionally enjoyable film, but with artfully mistimed comic moments and extraordinary scenes of inspired inconsequentiality (Margot climbing a tree and getting stuck, the ongoing fracas with the neighbours) this is a surprisingly compelling dark comedy.

NB: Margot At The Wedding is released in London on 29/02. Others films of note released on the same day are Lars von Trier's The Boss Of It All and Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist.

Before 2003, fusing minimal techno and pop would have seemed a little absurd. That is, until Matthew Dear's important Leave Luck To Heaven, a release that propelled the Texan and his Ghostly label to a lofty position among electronic music's high priests. His critical renown has been amply sustained by his excursion into a tougher, machinist sound under the Audion/False monikers. Despite Audion holding a pretty strong claim to being the most accomplished North American techno act in recent times, Dear has now decided to again pick up his instruments -- and the microphone -- in a return to his earlier live work. Last year's Asa Breed, from which this run of gigs springs, does lack some of the sharpness that made Dear a worthy peer of Hawtin and Villalobos. However, its release could prove to be a canny shot across the bows of the minimal scene: if Dear thinks it's time to inject some live instrumentation back into the music, you can bet that others looking over his shoulder will be following suit. (For a free download of "Don't Go This Way", written during the recording sessions for Asa Breed but previously unreleased, click here.)

NB: DJs on the Saturday line-up are, among others, Ryan Elliot + Jennifer Cardini + Marc Antona (live) + Luke Slater.

There is something about geometric systems that are visually satisfying. Uncluttered and clear, there is an agreeable artifice about them that invariably bears witness to their construction, detailing and made-ness. There is nothing accidental about straight lines. Maybe this is why painters endlessly explore all possible combinations of line and plane, and why raking light cast over the most mundane of man-made objects can convert their familiar topographies into Fritz Lang landscapes or mobile instruments of wonderment. Perhaps picking up where Mondrian and Moholy-Nagy left off, Germaine Kruip, in her first solo show at The Approach, brings to mind some of the geometric and spatial questions that have been asked again and again to varying degrees of success. Combining pleasing geometric shapes, shadows and mechanical re-ordering of the visual structures on display, Kruip's work is clean, yet intricate, intriguing and simple. Their kinesis draws these objects out of the realm of the cliche, and poses subtle questions about architecture, space and the passage of time.

NB: runs till 02/03.

Lars von Trier's latest cinematic offering brings us back to the director's homeland, and a long way from racist, rural America. A comedy that it as much a paean to the comic form as it is just a very funny film, The Boss Of It All plays with comic conventions, disorients with its various layers of meta-theatrical representation and, like the best of them, walks a fine line between comedy and tragedy. The story is appropriately ludicrous; the owner of a Danish software company who has, since the company's inception, pretended to be the aide of a made-up and safely invisible boss in order to shirk responsibility for nasty decision-making, is forced to broker a deal in person. He hires an out-of work actor to introduce himself to the office as "the boss of it all" and the result is a hilarious and surreal couple of hours that is part Shakespeare, part The Office and part Brecht. Von Trier himself appears in the film, providing voiceovers at crucial moments in the narrative, gleefully introducing new characters and new problems for his cast of puppets to overcome, and ultimately making the audience think twice about who might be the real boss of it all.

NB: The Boss Of It All is released in London on 29/02. Other films of note released on the same day are Margot At The Wedding and Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist.

Gavin Bryars is a curious persona in the world of contemporary music. Having had a baptism of fire in Joseph Holbrooke, he has since pursued a path of making music that is characterised by both an awareness of the avant garde and a formal rigour attributed to quasi-classical minimalism. Fortuitously, this would seem to have made him a kind of spiritual half-brother to what Brian Eno would later term ambient music. From here on in, it is perhaps easier to see his musical work in the context of its commissioning and we suspect this is really the intended theme of this talk. The pairing with David Toop would also seem apt, as to a certain extent they both share a similar contextual predicament, with Toop's own work as a musician essentially given credence by his primary status as a writer and curator. Given this predilection for thematic re-invention, it is significant that the term "architecture" appears to be used here only in a suitably vague sense, bereft of any specific connotations or repercussions, invoked with the transparent intent to provoke a conversation that desires its gravitas but which in truth seems fit to only serve up an anaemic distillation of its aesthetic concerns.

NB: Gavin Bryars and David Toop will be in conversation with Iain Fenlon, Professor of Historical Musicology at Cambridge University and a Fellow of King's College.

If 1968 saw the birth of a new world era of liberal morality, will 2007 see the end of it? The anarchy that dislodged the Charles de Gaulle regime in May 1968 had worldwide repercussions: students across North and South America and Europe shouted their dissatisfaction in strikes and marches that often ended violently. It was a year of change, and a replacement of the old order with liberal principles of equality, sexual choice and human rights that have governed domestic law and international diplomacy ever since. Have the failed humanitarian interventions of the last decade discredited the legacy of 1968, and if so, what comes next? The list of speakers is impressively expert: Barack Obama's senior foreign policy advisor, Harvard Professor and Pulitzer Prize winner, Samantha Power; former UN Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown and playwright David Hare, with Newsnight's Peter Barron in the chair.

NB: David Hare's play The Vertical Hour is currently running at the Royal Court (till 01/03).

Exploring self-fictionalisation and the production of truths, Faisal Abdu'Allah's newly commissioned film installation presents us with varied points from which to view the story of Ago Piero Ajano, who claims to be a direct descendent of King Edward VIII. The central focus of the installation is a four-screen filmic portrait of Ajano: the front, back, left and right side of his head are presented to us in crisp detail. It is as if by meeting his eyes or staring intently at the pores on the back of his head we might be able to discern the truth. Scraps of his life story detailing his attempted visit to the Queen, his claim to the throne and hedonistic lifestyle in the '80s, to his impoverished existence in a council flat today are imparted by Ajano, his friends and lawyer. Viewers are asked to verify the resulting picture for themselves. The mechanisms that uphold binaries of fact and fiction, chugging along in order to give us some semblance of stability in our increasingly shaken world, are unlocked by Abdu'Allah's intricate portrait.

NB: Faisal Abdu'Allah's The Browning Of Britannia screens at the BFI till 18/05.

On a trip to Africa some years ago, Sandy McCall Smith was invited out to lunch. Awaiting his meal, he caught sight of a woman in a red dress unremittingly chasing an evasive chicken. She eventually caught it and wrung its neck. Smith thought he might like to write about just such an enterprising woman. And so he did. Ten years later The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency is a series of eight books (with a ninth about to be published) that has sold seven million copies and been published in 42 different languages. Fans include Prince Charles and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers' Flea. The chicken chaser spawned the series' adored heroine, the "traditionally built" Mma Ramotswe, who sold the 180 cattle bequeathed to her by her father to become Botswana's first female private eye. Her dealings regularly involve wayward daughters, missing husbands (and ostriches), philandering partners and curious conmen, not to mention Mr JLB Matekoni, the charming proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. Smith comes to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the start of this series and the evening will include a clip from the long-awaited forthcoming BBC TV adaptation by Anthony Minghella and Richard Curtis. A most satisfactory event for World Book Day.

NB: another Daunt Books talk of note is Edward Lucas + Orlando Figes on 27/02 (7pm).

Designers are intimately concerned with our day-to-day lives, from where we live to what we wear to how we travel. As we face the threat of environmental catastrophe and increasing humanitarian crises at the dawn of the 21st century, they are playing a vital role in our quest for a better, greener life. For instance, eco-friendly homes and clothes are rising in popularity, as more and more people wake up to the reality of the need to conserve our resources in view of approaching climate change. This debate will explore the issues surrounding whether or not designers can, in fact, save the world. Journalist, author and curator Henrietta Thompson will chair the discussion of a panel of design professionals, including industrial designer Ross Lovegrove, &made, architect Chris Medland (Architecture For Humanity), and ecological fashion expert Orsola de Castro.

NB: to book tickets, contact The Art Fund office on 08700 503 688.

Swiss artist Roman Signer is fascinated by the mechanisms of the everyday props we take for granted. Out of context these objects become the characters in tender absurdist plots that reveal much about our relationships to each other and the material world. Here, the red tape for negotiation on entry to the gallery is not of a legal but a purely practical kind -- it covers the cables that define the outer edge of a floor-bound blueprint. Within its architectural demarcation a curious red mechanical bug appears at play amongst an audience of metal chairs. Forcing its way through the legs of the objects with terrier-like insistence, it could be a scale model of a lone dodgem, but is actually an automated lawnmower. In this bank-cum-gallery, it might be construed as a parting shot from an irate cleaner or a bored invigilator's prank, but viewed from the mezzanine (home to some sublime examples of his filmed experiments with water), the scene hinges on an anthropomorphic subtlety between the humour and drama precipitated by physical action. In the vault, a body-conscious device becomes a preventive entity in a film work within which Signer attempts to shoot a firearm on target while attached to a vibrating belt.

NB: runs till 15/03.

In 1971, film scholar Barry Salt borrowed Terry Gilliam's London flat and shot a film called Permutations: Six Reels Of Film To Be Shown In Any Order. The projectionist is supposed to roll a customized dice in order to determine the order of the reels, which have scenes that vary depending on the order in which they are shown. This aleatoric (from latin alea, the rolling of dice) film experiment is but one example from a proud tradition of chance-based cultural expressions, including some of Pierre Boulez's music, Luke Rhinehart's novel The Dice Man, and -- if we are to believe its programme director (and Zaha Hadid's right-hand architect) Patrik Schumacher -- the Architectural Association's Design Research Lab. However, the DRL uses chance in a highly controlled way, to initiate a mutational process that opens up the architectural gene pool to opportunities for expanding the formal universe and finding innovative strategies -- beneficial mutations -- that allow architecture to permeate and permutate the progress of society. The DRL TEN exhibition traces ten years of experimentation to find such mutations, including the opening of a brand new pavilion outside the AA, and the launch of the book DRL TEN: A Design Research Compendium.

NB: runs till 18/03.

Peter Greenaway and Raoul Ruiz have both scored the double whammy of directing critically acclaimed films and penning intellectual novels. Greenaway is a modern-day Renaissance man, best known for his visually stunning film The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover (1989), which revelled in a young Helen Mirren's naked form, and his naughty story of Baroque aristocrats The Draughtsman's Contract (1982). He is also an accomplished artist, curator and author. Greenaway was born in Wales in 1942 and trained as a painter, the influence of Flemish and Renaissance art evident in his filmic tableaux vivants. Ruiz, meanwhile, was born in Chile in 1941 and exiled to Paris in 1973, where he began his illustrious career in avant-garde theatre and wrote more than 100 plays. The poetic use of images in first feature film Tres tristes tigres (1968) placed him at the cutting edge of Chilean cinema. International recognition came in the '80s with his pirate-fests Treasure Island (1986) and City Of Pirates (1983). As authors of The Rise And Fall Of Gesture Drama (Greenaway), and the Poetics Of Cinema (Ruiz), the duo know a thing or two about contemporary storytelling on celluloid, and will hopefully divulge a few tips on constructing a narrative to an eager audience of aspiring film-makers.

NB: also of note is the Michael Haneke retrospective at Cine Lumiere (29/02 till 09/03).

Double Agent makes for an unsettling experience. All the works shown -- much of which is performance-based but takes in photography and sculpture as well -- use other people as their media, exploring meta-theatrics and mediation and raising pertinent questions about exploitation and representation in contemporary art. Instant Narrative (IN) by Dora Garcia is particularly disquieting and comprises a large screen onto which sentences hastily written by an observer stationed in the corner of the gallery are projected. You realise after a time that the observer is in fact writing sentences about you -- commenting on your dress and making assumptions about you. Finding that you are not only the observer but also the observed, and that you are fitting into someone else's narrative, makes for an awkward as well as flattering scenario and says much about our "reality"-obsessed culture. Artur Zmijewski explores this theme even further in the upstairs gallery; his video Them documents a series of painting workshops undertaken by warring factions of Polish Catholics, Jews, Young Socialists and Polish Nationalists in an uproarious if clearly stage-managed set-up. Unlike many a themed group show, the work in Double Agent is sincerely and relevantly engaged with its subject matter, making for a tight and compelling exhibition. Don't miss out.

NB: runs till 06/04. On 05/04 (3pm) catch Dora Garcia when she gives a talk at the ICA.

The African continent is a lifelong source of fascination for artist Alfredo Jaar. Though New York-based, Jaar grew up in Pinochet's Chile and is no stranger to upheaval and injustice. But it is his response to the Rwandan genocide for which he is best known; in 1994, just after the horrific events unfolded, Jaar travelled to the country to document his findings. What resulted was not only a passionate engagement with the country and its survivors but also a critical interest in the ethics of photojournalism. Jaar's show at the SLG presents work solely on the subject of Africa and its representation in the media. Included in the show are two pieces from 2006, The Sound Of Silence and From Time To Time and film Muxima, shown at last year's Venice Biennale. The Sound Of Silence, however, is the standout piece; a multimedia installation-cum-sensory experience, housed in a mausoleum-like box, it is a silent film documenting the history of a single image from the '90s Sudanese famine. The image in question -- of a dying girl stalked by a hungry vulture -- won its maker a Pulitzer Prize but also harsh criticism, eventually prompting him to commit suicide. This lyrical work, free of any noisy polemic, makes us think long and hard about our image-saturated world.

NB: runs till 06/04. On 13/03 (6:30pm) catch Alfredo Jaar in conversation at Tate Modern.

On April 16th and 17th, The Breeders perform at KOKO, touring on the soon-to-be- released Mountain Battles album, out on April 7th -- the first from the band since 2002's Title TK. The band is clearly a labour of love for Kim Deal, which she formed in 1988 while still playing bass in the Pixies. It's been a rocky road at times, taking in an array of line-up changes (though always with Deal and her sister Kelley at the core) and several spells of inactivity (most notably when Kelley was in rehab for drugs offences), so it makes it all the more remarkable that they've retained a certain sense of magic. On a good day, the band is as impressive as the Pixies -- sparkly melodic hooks perfectly cast against the raw power of the stripped-down guitars and rhythm section. Their last appearance in London was at Blackheath Halls in 2005, as part of 4AD's 25th birthday celebrations, and saw them on captivating form as they delivered a retrospective set. If that's what they can muster when "off the circuit", then this show -- part of a full European tour -- should be a treat.

NB: get your tickets fast as the April 16th is already sold out.

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