Karlheinz Stockhausen's legacy will be a long one, and to remind us spnm present an evening of versions of his work, plus music inspired by him. The Sound Source, an apt title for this series, begins with Belgian pianist Daan Vandewalle -- who studied music both in Ghent and California -- performing Klavierstuecke I-IV, which Stockhausen described as "his drawings". Vandewalle joins percussionist and drummer Chris Cutler on a version of Kontakte. Also a music theorist and composer, Cutler's long CV includes founding the Art Bears, and working with Henry Cow, Pere Ubu, Fred Frith, Zeena Parkins and Peter Blegvad. Meanwhile sonic artist Scanner (aka Robin Rimbaud) promises to follow the line of guitar work he has been pursuing recently (as a member, for instance, of Githead), combined with his more familiar electronic slant, for some pieces inspired by the composer, and later as part of a work that is a tribute to Stockhoven/Beethausen, by the three artists together.

Henry Marsh, the surgeon of the title, originally started out studying philosophy before switching to neurosurgery. Since then, with cast-off NHS equipment, black humour, endless passionate commitment and a Black & Decker style drill with a dodgy battery, Marsh has spent 15 years using his knowledge, equipment and holiday time in a battle to raise the standards of neurosurgery in the Ukraine. When not treating brain tumours (or grappling with NHS bureaucracy) at St George's Tooting, he travels to Kiev where he mentors fellow neurosurgeon Igor Kurilets. Igor -- endlessly keen, humorous, and considered a complete "loose cannon" by officialdom in Kiev -- now runs his own hospital in a former KGB building. Together they plow through the crowds of patients, offering a last chance -- or not -- to the desperate. Although not for the squeamish, essentially the film examines the huge ethical and philosophical questions that doctors constantly face. Marsh's sense of triumph when an operation is successful is balanced by the thought of past -- and possibly future -- failed operations, and by those patients he just cannot help. Eye-opening, thoughtful and surprisingly funny, it also includes an original score by Nick Cave.

NB: each of the screenings will be followed by Q&As with Henry Marsh and filmmaker Geoffrey Smith. This event is free but you need to email events@wellcomecollection.org or call 020.7611.2222 to attend. If you cannot make these screenings, you can catch one at the ICA on 20/03 (4pm) and one at the Renoir on 25/03 (6:30pm). Also of note is the special screening of White Light/Black Rain at the ICA on 19/03 (9pm).

Miklos Jancso's The Round-Up (1965) is widely considered a true classic of world cinema. Its stunning visual style -- characterised by long takes, bleak, expansive landscape and minimal dialogue -- has been a major influence on canonical filmmakers such as Bela Tarr to Sergio Leone. A meditation on the abuse of power, The Round-Up tells the story of a group of prisoners held in a Hungarian detention camp in 1869. While attempting to come to terms with Hungarian history, the film has a universal potency; the conditions of the stockade might easily be transported to Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo. To celebrate the release of this extraordinary work on English language DVD, Curzon Cinemas and Second Run are hosting a special mini-season of Jancso's films, with the 86-year-old director himself in attendance. In addition to The Round-Up, there will be an opportunity to see two more of Jancso's masterpieces from the '60s -- My Way Home (1964) and The Red And The White (1967) -- and a recent, rarely-screened black comedy, The Lord's Lantern In Budapest (1999), which reveals a distinct, more burlesque style of filmmaking.

NB: this mini-festival runs from 14/03 till 16/03 at both the Curzon Soho and the Curzon Mayfair. Also of note this week is the release of Water Lilies, Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely, Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Flight Of The Red Balloon and Brian De Palma's Redacted. Keep in mind the special screenings of The English Surgeon at the Wellcome Collection and the mini Miklos Jancso festival at the Curzon Soho/Mayfair.

Tate Modern's odyssey though the many stages of French avant-garde cinema from 1890 to the present day begins in earnest this week. Spread over seven consecutive weekends, this epic trawl through films by pioneering Dadaists, through to Jean-Luc Godard and finally to contemporary filmmakers including Mounir Fatmi and Philippe Grandrieux, will furnish any keen student with an unrivaled crash-course in the genre. The weekly screenings are categorised according to a range of tantalising titles, including Psychedelic, Pure and X (unsurprisingly this one deals with pornography in the avant-garde), and all inspired by the manifestos of Dada luminaries Marcel Duchamp and Tristan Tzara. This week kicks off with Figurative, a look at movement and the body in films from as early as 1892 -- thematically a good start, given the word cinema's etymological root is "kinesis". A particular highlight is Georges Melies' Living Soap Bubbles (1906), in which the famed magician-turned-cinematographer features as an illusionist capable of conjuring women from his pipe -- reason if any to catch the opening screening. The organisers have dispensed with chronology for the programme, so even if you only want to dip in and out of this seven-weekender, rest assured you'll be able to see old and new films in startling proximity at every viewing.

NB: runs from 14/03 till 02/05.

It is not often that one can recall an artist who has acted alongside Robert Mitchum, roadied for Johnny Thunders And The Heartbreakers, toured with Adam And The Ants and was a founding member of seminal Matt Johnson-led The The. Promoted as Britain's answer to David Cassidy (of Partridge Family fame) in the early '70s, Simon Fisher Turner underwent a transformation in his late teens from pimply pop star to collaborator with choreographer Rosemary Butcher, film director Michael Almereyda, the Elysian Quartet, and most predominantly with filmmaker Derek Jarman, scoring the films The Last Of England, The Garden, Edward II, and the celebrated experimental movie Blue. It's with this immersive final work that audiences will be able to hear him improvise and riff on themes from the feature film. In collaboration with the writer Black Sifichi from Paris, he will recharge the flotsam and jetsam from his innovative sound design into a work of rich elegant beauty. A passionate and delicate piece should emerge from the darkness, providing a cinema for the ears.

NB: this event has been programmed in conjunction with the Isaac Julien curated Derek Jarman show at the Serpentine (runs till 13/04). On 23/03 (5pm) catch the free screenings of Derek Jarman: Life As Art, Sebastiane and Caravaggio at the Roxy Bar & Screen.

Those attentive folk at Foyles are putting on another of their slick "all day" literary operations packed to the brim with delicious treats. This time publishers Vintage are celebrating their smashing classics collection. First up is an event with the savvy Marie Phillips (she of God's Behaving Badly fame) about the trials and tribulations of getting published. Just what is it that makes a classic today? And pleasingly we also get to hear an agent's and publisher's point of view on this. Then comes the lofty Louis de Bernieres to discuss his resplendent new novel The Partisan's Daughter. Other special events include a debate on favourite literary heroines with AS Byatt (hers is certainly not Harry Potter's Hermione) and Adam Thirlwell; and a talk on how classics are scripted for the big screen with Deborah Moggach (screenplay writer of Pride And Prejudice). This is also an occasion to raid your bookshelves for dog-eared copies of The Satanic Verses and Midnight's Children as Sir Salman Rushdie (if you please) will be popping in for a book signing. You might even win a complete set of Vintage Classics. Buy your ticket, quick.

NB: Louis de Bernieres will also be at the London Review Bookshop on 19/03 (7pm).

Steve Reid's CV reads like a who's who of jazz and soul, the New Yorker-turned-Swiss resident drummer having worked with Miles Davis, James Brown and Quincy Jones. For this back-history alone, it would be worth stumping up for seldom-cheap Jazz Cafe tickets to see Reid rewrite the percussionist's rulebook. Put him alongside Kieran Hebden, one of the most consistently inventive electronic producers of the moment, and you've a pairing that is guaranteed to send you off into the far reaches of improvisation. The precocious duo, are, conventionally speaking, from opposite ends of the sonic spectrum, with Hebden the aggressive modernist foil to Reid's historic back catalogue. It's no quixotic liaison, though; bringing two instinctive avant-gardists together is entirely natural, since they first collaborated three years ago and later recorded The Exchange Session Vol. 1. On that first occasion the result was a 35 minute, one-take endeavour, entirely free of any kind of modification, overdub or enhancement. Now promoting their third outing, Tongues, the occasion to hear this calibre of raw improv is pretty close to unique.

Marie is a young teen aimlessly floating through the suburbs of Paris, a quiet observer of all that goes on about her. Slight, boyish and childlike, she's moronically intrigued by the synchronised swimmers who train and compete at the local pool. But the swimming pool is an awkward environment for teenage girls to metamorphose into women, as every physical development takes place under the unforgiving stretch of shiny lycra -- newly-formed breasts perch above stomachs that are only slowly shedding puppy fat, sprouting pubic hair is visible, and sexual desire is an alien impulse quivering within exposed skin. Except in the case of Floriane, whose masterful embrace of nubile adulthood simultaneously seduces and repels. Marie is lost to her feminine charms, much to the chagrin of Anne, her brash, ungraceful, but loyal best friend. As the three girls find their footing in the unfamiliar environment of adulthood, the nature of their relationships with one another and their peers changes incontrovertibly. The synchronised swimming metaphor -- the tension between the struggle below water and the performance above -- is a brilliant and elucidating device. It's not so much the uneven terrain of adolescence that Water Lilies muses on with quiet poignancy, so much as its translucent, fluidity -- making for an altogether more beguiling, occasionally alarming piece of film.

NB: Water Lilies is released in London on 14/03. Also of note this week is the release of Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely, Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Flight Of The Red Balloon and Brian De Palma's Redacted. Keep in mind the special screenings of The English Surgeon at the Wellcome Collection and the mini Miklos Jancso festival at the Curzon Soho/Mayfair.

French composer Cecile Schott, known as Colleen, came to the public's attention in 2003 with her debut album, the stunning Everyone Alive Wants Answers (Leaf), whose winsome, delicate textures and lullaby-like melodies were based on looped record samples. Her work swiftly evolved, employing acoustic instruments for live performances, augmented with effects pedals. Her 2005 follow-up The Golden Morning Breaks consolidated her lyrical and organic sounds, and her third release, Colleen et les boites a musique, was created with chiming music boxes. Her live sets are often more fluid then these recordings, charcaterised by a beguiling mixture of fairytale sounds, as evinced in last year's Les ondes silencieuses album. The classically trained Max de Wardener will supply evocative harmonics and floating cloud chamber-bowl-harmonic-sonics, together with the Elysian Quartet and Vox Cordis choir; a complimentary combination of ethereal auditory visions, in a suitably austere venue.

Georges Perec is a great figure in French literature, whose masterpiece Life: A User's Manual (1978) is frequently rated as a masterpiece alongside none other than James Joyce's Ulysses. But whereas Joyce's modernist work charts the events of one day in Dublin, Perec turns his attention to the lives of the inhabitants of a fictitious Parisian apartment block. And while Joyce freely experiments with stream-of-consciousness writing, Perec strictly adheres to a complex literary pattern. He steps into the rooms of the apartment, charting the stories of lives behind closed doors, with the meticulous attention and deft reflexes of a chess player. He was inspired by the Oulipo workshop, a gathering of French-speaking writers and mathematicians that explored the potential of formal writing constraints, and which included Francois Le Lionnais and Raymond Queneau, to whom the book is dedicated. On its completion, Perec won the Prix Medicis, securing his international reputation. For this event, Oulipo aficionados Jacques Roubaud, Marcel Benabou, Ian Monk and Herve Le Tellier, together with Oulipo President Paul Fournel, meet to discuss the updated translation of Perec's masterpiece (Vintage, 2008), alongside distinguished translator David Bellos (Princeton professor and winner of the 2005 Man Booker International Translator's Prize).

NB: on 18/03 (7:30pm) catch the same authors, along with Stanley Chapman (a member of Oulipo the year that it was founded, 1960) and affiliated British poets, for an "Oulipo Evening" at the Calder Bookshop.

The East Coast band Black Dice (formed in 1997 in Providence, Rhode Island) is coming across the pond to cause some havoc in London with their loud mix of early-'80s-inspired abrassive rock/noise. Their harsh music and appearance jointly calls for a night of insanity, with every show guaranteed to be original. In their record Beaches And Canyons (helmed by Fisherspooner and produced by Nicholas Vernhes) the band turned to a more relaxed approach but still maintained an unforgettable and innovative sound. Black Dice have released past albums with the record labels Troubleman, Gravity, FatCat, DFA and now with Animal Collective's Paw Tracks label for their new and fourth LP Load Blown. In this latest effort new sounds and rhythms mingle to create an eccentric melange of futuristic music. The result is quite friendly to the ear, which makes this album their most accessible yet.

The latest film from the unfathomable mystery that is the mind of Harmony Korine, Mister Lonely tackles questions of identity, celebrity and community through the experiences of a group of outsiders. Removed from his usual suburban American locations, the film follows a Michael Jackson impersonator (Diego Luna) from Paris -- where he busks to an indifferent public before being befriended by Marilyn Monroe (Samantha Morton) -- to a remote castle in the west of Scotland, which houses a community of impersonators. Somehow co-existing peacefully, the disparate group -- including the Queen (Anita Pallenberg), Charlie Chaplin (Denis Lavant), the Pope (James Fox), Little Red Riding Hood, Shirley Temple, Madonna and Sammy Davis Jr -- respect each other's chosen identities and work towards being accepted by the local people, not for who they are but who they have chosen to be. More mature, and consequently more accessible, than earlier films Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy, it still retains the director's propensity to baffle (Werner Herzog and the sky-diving tropical nuns). Ultimately, Korine remains an auteur that invites and challenges viewers to form their own readings of his films.

NB: Mister Lonely is released in London on 14/03. Also of note this week is the release of Water Lilies, Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Flight Of The Red Balloon and Brian De Palma's Redacted. Keep in mind the special screenings of The English Surgeon at the Wellcome Collection and the mini Miklos Jancso festival at the Curzon Soho/Mayfair.

It's London during the '70s and Chris, treading water in a loveless marriage, seeks solace in Roza, a Yugoslavian illegal immigrant who offers him, at least initially, the promise of physical comfort. But, like a latter day Scheherazade, Roza instead enchants him by regaling him with tales from her tortuous and emotionally complex life, rather than satisfying him sexually in exchange for cash. Chris is no Persian King, but the couple's increasingly elusive physical consummation hangs above them, as does an impending death, as in The Book Of One Thousand And One Nights. But are the stories of this daughter of partisans fantasy, reality or an uneasy fusion of the two? And how much of Chris' interpretation of both her stories and their relationship is unclouded by his own angst-ridden experiences? Louis de Bernieres' latest novel, The Partisan's Daughter, has received mixed reviews (especially by female critics), but there's no better introduction to a novel than from the author himself, so if you're intrigued, listen to the man himself, as he gives a reading and talk at the London Review Bookshop.

NB: you can also catch Louis de Bernieres along with several other authors on 15/03 (10:30am - 6pm) at the Vintage Classics Day at Foyles.

There have been many documentaries about the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so why make another? Well, Steven Okazaki's film is a moving, powerful, deftly-paced account of what happened when the USA unleashed the jaw-dropping hell that is atomic warfare on Japan, as told by the remaining Japanese survivors and four members of the American bomber crews responsible for the attacks. These first-hand testimonies are mixed with archive footage to set the bombings in historical context, and show actual records of the utter devastation, along with (therapeutic) artwork from the survivors, performances from contemporary young Japanese pop stars and haunting background music from the magisterial Mogwai. Okazaki's super documentary, nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, starts with a quote from Einstein: "I don't know what kind of weapons will be used in the third world war... But I can tell you what the fourth world war will be fought with stone clubs". That's what nuclear war means of -- a return to the Stone Age. But the genie is out of the bottle. All we can hope is that by eloquently recalling past traumas we can avoid future catastrophes.

NB: if you cannot make this screening catch another one at the Renoir on 18/03 (6:30pm). Both screenings are part of this year's Human Rights Watch International Film Festival (12/03 till 21/03). Also of note are the special screenings of The English Surgeon at the Wellcome Collection (13/03, 14/03 and 15/03).

Chomskian Abstract, Cornelia Parker's film about the political activist and intellectual Noam Chomsky, is something of a departure for the Turner Prize-nominated artist, who describes the piece as "me putting my head above the parapet". Parker is best known for installations composed of found objects, yet the subject matter here is far more profound: after attending a climate change seminar at Oxford University, where scientists implored writers and artists to address the environment in their work, Parker stepped up to the mark and produced a polemical piece for the 8th Sharjah Biennial in the UAE, on the theme of "art, ecology and the politics of change". While exploring foreign policy and environmental issues, Parker came across a voice of reason in the form of Noam Chomsky, and invited him to discuss with her the impotent reaction of the American government to impending environmental disaster. Although Parker's editing comes across as a little clumsy rather than abstract, her questions are stimulating, and Chomsky's response is engaging and apocalyptic, leaving the viewer with plenty of food for thought.

NB: runs till 30/03. New work by Cornelia Parker can also be found at Frith Street Gallery, in an exhibition inspired by the surrealist game Latent News, where new meanings are given to newspaper articles by cutting them up and reassembling them (till 24/04).

Philip Akkerman is a rare creature, a conceptual artist that makes self-portraits. He studied in Holland under Stanley Brouwn and Jan Dibbets, admiring the rigour of Brouwn's practice and applying it to an eclectic painting style where consistency rests with the self-portrait as an unvarying starting point. It is the unexpected directions in which Akkerman takes this idea and the resulting 2,400+ images [so far], that are so fascinating. Imagine self-help artwork from prison classes let loose on the art-world, or Robert Crumb-meets-Van Gogh- impersonating-Philip Guston, and you get the idea. All Akkerman's works are in oil paint on small panels of board, and usually hung in serried ranks that exaggerate their non-conformity. The mixture of zaniness and serious subject matter of which Rembrandt would surely approve, alongside a good dose of ageing and death, put Akkerman in a unique position among contemporary painters, as an artist capable of making you laugh and think seriously at the same time. This is an exhibition not to be missed, suggesting the many possibilities a conceptual brain and serious sense of humour can find in contemporary painting and a reminder that not all living painters from the Low Countries suffer delusions of self-importance.

NB: runs till 11/04.

Silence and space are at a premium in our bustling industrious city, with architecture defining the limits and possibilities of engaging with it. The relationships between buildings and music are many, with repeating patterns, harmony of shapes and textures, order of sequences and intervals being essential ingredients of both. When John Cage offered up his seminal work 4' 33", focusing on the silence around us, it was clear to listeners that we need not fear about the future of music: it's around us in all forms. This performance and talk will explore how artists have imaginatively transformed our environment and stimulated thought around notions of place and sense. Painter and musician Tom Phillips RA will be in conversation with his former student, musician and theorist Brian Eno, and architect Vesna Petresin Robert, expanding upon ideas of intellect, intervals and liberty within our environment. Don't miss this chance to open up your mind to the silence around you.

NB: the event will be chaired by KultureFlash's very own Scanner.

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