Stephan Dillemuth's films on Wagner, the Romantics and the Life Reform movements in Germany confront us with the rubble of the past and rattle on the foundations of the present. Presented for the first time with English subtitles, these are lucid, critical and irreverent films, delineating utopian, revolutionary and reactionary tendencies within artistic avant-gardes and bohemian movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and revealing how their basic aspirations are still active today, lurking behind the new ideologies of the contemporary art market, "lifestyle" politics and the bourgeois fetishization of creativity. Colliding performance footage, TV documentary, archive material and pirated costume drama, Dillemuth's shrewd and often darkly humorous films evince the seriousness of his research and the deftness with which he handles historical material. Avoiding didactic explanations or crude comparative analysis, Dillemuth's ongoing research into contemporary notions of the public sphere under neo-liberalism and into the political issues facing cultural production today reveals itself in these films in its confounded complexity, asking the question: "Can we dance on this stage?"

NB: catch Stephan Dillemuth for post-screening Q&As on both 18/09 (7pm) and 20/09 (4pm). Both these events are free but to secure a spot you need to send an email to salon@lux.org.uk. Stephan Dillemuth - Selected Films runs at LUX 28 till 28/09.

It's not often you hear the words "big cash prize" or "competition" in any sentence including the words "contemporary dance". The Place Prize is a unique example of what can happen when the corporate world supports the arts (here Bloomberg) without dictating the content of work benefiting from their investment. Twenty choreographers have each been commissioned to produce a new work. After preview performances, each piece is performed in the semi-finals where a panel of judges chooses five works to go through to the finals. At the end of the finals, one winner is chosen to receive The Place Prize 2008, along with £25,000. There is also a chance for audience input, as the "audience vote" during each semi-final and final ("fingers on keypads, please") determines which works are awarded smaller cash prizes. Booking for the final on the 27/09 is highly recommended, if only for the surreal experience of waiting to find out the name of the winner -- electric tension and air-punching elation in a contemporary dance performance, who'd have thought it...

NB: The Place Prize finals run from 17/09 till 27/09. For more dance, be sure to catch Akram Khan and Juliette Binoche's collaborative piece in-i at the NT (17/09 till 20/10), dancEUnion at the Southbank Centre (19/09 till 21/09) and Emanuel Gat Dance (set to music by Squarepusher) at Sadler's Wells (19/09 and 20/09).

Whilst the faux Williamsburg hippy shtick of MGMT might be the apple of most people's eyes right now (a massively overhyped Soulwax remix always helps) it's pertinent in these times of ADD-infused search for the next band who are like the last band but better, to throw the spotlight on Crystal Castles, who've been there, done that, worn the right hoodie, had a release on Kitsune and put their album out to generous praise. Whilst the ear-bending atari sounds that CC revel in might not be to the taste of everyone, their self-titled debut album was among the highlights of the year so far and they are musically gifted enough to have crafted excellent remixes for the likes of Health and GoodBooks. It's on the live stage that CC have sometimes flattered to deceive in the past, with shows veering precariously between the sublime and poor. However with several months of touring their album under their belt and having attained the notoriety of their set being pulled at Glastonbury 08 due to excessive stage diving antics from Skeletor-esque front woman Alice Glass, it's clear they have gained a hunger for riotous live shows of late.

As if high school was not traumatic enough, imagine if your history teacher had manipulated you into initiating a Third Reich? It's fair to say that might have left you with more psychological damage than that time you experimented with gothic fashion. Reprising the American 1981 made for television film, this version presents a number of cosmetic improvements that make it slicker and longer than the original, but the storyline remains unchanged. For instance, it is now set in Germany, where reflecting on notions of autocracy inevitably raises more issues than if set in California (in fact where the real life incident that inspired it happened, in 1969). In order to make it a feature length film, the narrative is thickened with more information on the lives of the students outside of class but the stereotypes remain: there is a jock, a rebel, a clown, a pretty girl and her not so pretty friend, etc. If it doesn't really delve much further than the original, it's because it doesn't have to. The questions raised are still relevant. This version just has a better pace and spares us the horrible '80s fashion of the original...

NB: The Wave is released in London 19/09. Also released on the same day is Linha de passe. Other events of note are the John Boorman and David Thomson talk and screening on 23/09 at the Barbican, the Ulrich Seidl on-stage interview and screening on 24/09 at the ICA and the John Berger talk and screening on 25/09 at the Curzon Mayfair.

Helium
The Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award is an annual prize given to a theatre company to nurture a seed of a new idea into a fully-grown innovative work. Inevitably not every year has borne fruit, but Slung Low's Helium is a little peach of a show, as sweet as the lollipop you're given at the start. You are guided alone through a series of installations in boxes. Each box is a memory, a page in the book of the life of Max, a pilot bombing Dresden during the war, who acquires an unexpected travelling companion. This book is read by his granddaughter Bella, who mysteriously receives a white helium balloon from Max every year for her birthday. We the audience eavesdrop our way into the story, precarious witnesses to the dying Max's inner thoughts, voiced by Patrick Stewart. It's very much an authored journey, without the freedom to adventure that a Punchdrunk audience might expect, but with immense clarity and resonance both in its form and story. It's perhaps too neatly formed and demonstrative, squeezing out the messy imaginings of the heart, but there is still great pleasure to be found in this well-told piece.

Speeches
Lone Twin are a duo of artists who in their work have often pressed extraordinary commitment into the simplest actions. Last year's Spiral saw them carry a desk from the outer edge of the Barbican estate on a spiralling and labyrinthine path to its heart, no matter what the obstacle and carrying whatever objects they were presented with along the way. In Speeches, they have explored the Barbican site in a very different way, recruiting people who live and work in the complex to deliver a speech on a subject that's dear to them. There's a rolling roster of speeches, and each night the audience travels to key locations in the Barbican to hear three of them, orated with open-hearted clarity from an orange soapbox. It's reminiscent of the brilliant live portraiture of the Argentine Vivi Tellas, and the show-and-tell formality of this particular format is disarmingly charming. The speeches are varied, funny and moving as only true stories told from the heart can be. This simplicity is well-sculpted, and the commitment that Lone Twin give to their subjects is palpable. And it's free too, so no excuse not to check it out.

NB: Helium runs from now till 20/09 daily from 6pm till 9:45pm and also 12pm till 3:45pm on 20/09 (entrance times are every 5 minutes and the performance lasts 35 minutes). Speeches runs from now till 20/09 at 1pm, 2pm, 6pm and 7pm with the three speeches lasting approximately 65 to 75 minutes (admission is free but you need to book via speeches@barbican.org.uk).

If you find yourself questioning both the art market and the street art craze that has swept London, this exhibition brings to the table both an experimentation of artistic expression and solid evidence that the urban art world is bullet-proof. In this industrial, yet pristine space, a world of masked villains and comic super-heroes is unleashed by street legend WK Interact and the untamed Anthony Lister. Using collage, colour (a first for WK) and materialization, WK confirms with this show his importance as an artist in a field not ready to be laid to rest quite yet. Many pieces are set against a background of collaged photographs that bring to mind a rather '60s ideal of a future-tech life and the optimism of race, with images of white-shirted scientists with brylcreemed hair and retro/kitsch American autos. All of this makes up the milieu for his customary villains and their skateboards, ready and willing to combat the world of flux. Lister's work, despite being a little hit and miss here, does provide intrigue with his trial at sculpture (another first) and dark adaptations of a comic world in which the heroes may or may not "save the day".

NB: runs till 20/09. For WK fans take note that the Pompidou Centre will mount a solo show of his work next year and another solo alongside Invader at Jonathan Levine in NYC next summer. Back in London and also of note is the Lazarides off-site Paul Insect show which runs till 21/09.

Sergei Rachmaninoff is commonly hailed today as the last great representative of Russian late Romanticism in classical music, and who in many respects joins the dots between the tradition of Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov and the more modernist leanings of Scriabin, Prokofiev and ultimately Shostakovich. However, this was by no means always the case and he was often considered in the annals of classical music as a pianist whose compositions were of note mainly for the virtuosity they required of the performer. The film Shine goes some way to affirming this reputation. Nevertheless, what lifts Rachmaninoff's compositions out of a Paganini-like fate; where they are invoked in a haze of bravado, is the depth and sincerity of emotion Rachmaninoff requires from his interpreters and it is perhaps this quality in his work that has really cemented his significance as a composer. Rachmaninoff's struggle to find methods of articulating the regret, frustration, anguish and nostalgia that filled his life drove him into a world completely of his own and bought audiences into contact with a gamut of emotions seldom seen in classical music up until this point and rarely articulated with such grace since. Fittingly, in the hands of Valery Gergiev, Rachmaninoff could not have found a more spirited medium.

NB: this festival runs on both 20/09 and 21/09 at both the Barbican and LSO St Luke's and is part of the larger LSO Emigre 2008/9 series of concerts.

The valuable piece of jewellery, the documents in the briefcase, or the coded message hidden in a piece of music: the MacGuffin is the filmic gimmick that keeps the plot thickening. Largely irrelevant and often nonsensical, Alfred Hitchcock, who made the concept his own, said of the cinematic device, "The only thing that really matters is that in the picture the plans, documents or secrets must seem to be of vital importance to the characters. To me, the narrator, they're of no importance whatsoever". Designers Onkar Kular and Noam Toran present The MacGuffin Library as part of a programme of performance-based installations at The Embankment Galleries that explores the common ground between art and design. Kular and Toran will write 20 film synopses and then design and manufacture their own collection of MacGuffin-esque objects to accompany the scripts on-site via a rapid prototyping machine. This is the venue's second exhibition to test the limits of contemporary art and what better place to do it than in the traditional setting of Somerset House.

NB: runs till 05/10. The MacGuffin Library is part of Somerset House's Wouldn't it be nice... Wishful thinking in art and design exhibition which runs till 07/12. Also of note is The London Design Fesitival which runs till 23/09 and London Open House which runs on 20/09 and 21/09.

We've always been impressed by the work of director Walter Salles. In fact The Motorcycle Diaries, Central Station and Behind The Sun are all favourites of ours. His latest outing, Linha de passe (co directed by Daniela Thomas) is an eminently depressing tale of a ridiculously poor family who live on the edge of Sao Paolo that follows single mother (excellently played by Sandra Corveloni), who is pregnant with a fifth fatherless child, and each of her four illegitimate sons. Denis is a motorcycle courier who falls into thievery, Dinho is a born again Christian who loses his job; Dario is a talented footballer while 10-year-old Reginald, steals a large bus and drives it across town. Salles said that he wanted to make a movie that shows that, for such dead-end kids, there is a way out of poverty other than the criminal route -- which is admirable but, the film may not be for everyone. Without doubt, it is a well-acted and beautifully shot movie with all the right motives that will, undeniably, find much favour in many quarters but are good intentions really enough to make a good film? Having said that, it is certainly a refreshing change from the more recent flashy Brazilian fodder. Go see it and decide for yourself.

NB: Linha de passe is released in London 19/09. Also released on the same day is The Wave. Other events of note are the John Boorman and David Thomson talk and screening on 23/09 at the Barbican, the Ulrich Seidl on-stage interview and screening on 24/09 at the ICA and the John Berger talk and screening on 25/09 at the Curzon Mayfair.

As part of the Barbican Screentalk series, John Boorman, veteran director of the gripping (and brilliantly stylish) '60s thriller Point Blank and cult hillbilly-horror Deliverance will join long-time film critic (and one-man cinema encyclopedia) David Thomson for a discussion on what makes a landmark film. The talk follows a screening of To Be Or Not to Be, which Thomson, whose most recent book details and critiques a recommended 1,000 films, considers as one of his favourites. A pitch-black war-time comedy about the invasion of Warsaw, To Be Or Not To Be relentlessly pokes fun at that group that has become, over the years, fertile ground for satire in cinema: the Nazis. However, Ernst Lubitsch's classic film is not just a Nazi-ridiculing comedy set during the war, it's a Nazi-ridiculing comedy made in 1942 -- during the war -- a quarter of a century before Mel Brooks was mocking them in The Producers (coincidentally Brooks went on to both produce and star in a controversial 1983 remake of To Be Or Not To Be). A chance to pick the brains of those from both sides of the creative divide -- the creator and the critic -- on what makes a classic film.

NB: new films of note released this week are The Wave and Linha de passe. Also of interest is the Ulrich Seidl on-stage interview and screening on 24/09 at the ICA and the John Berger talk and screening on 25/09 at the Curzon Mayfair.

The long protracted stay of a certain white Texan in the White House is rapidly drawing to a close and with the short-term memory of a nation skilled in re-packaging the new, the God-fearing and ridiculous antics of Bush will most likely, dissolve into a gentle miasma of departing waves, and fond tales of his foibles. Obama is the man who has, in his own election rhetoric, taken on the hope of a nation, wearied by the recent bumpy ride at home and abroad. With him the issue of race has become prevalent as never before, and in recent weeks a political hot potato, as conservative America showed its hand, and a very simple Alaskan woman got a huge promotion. Such is the extent of their reaction against a black man as president. The Southbank's America Decides season gives the voices of dissent a hearing across the art forms, and makes a nice change from election diatribe. Candace Allen, David Roediger and Kenan Malik, three prolific writers and thinkers on the nuanced arguments around race throughout America's history, join up to discuss Obama and the candidacy (23/09, 7:45pm). Then in the next few weeks look out for novelist Paul Auster positing the idea of a darker side to America (09/10, 7:30pm); front-man of Public Enemy, Chuck D's lyrical critique (10/10, 7:45pm); and historian Simon Schama (16/10, 7:30pm).

NB: America Decides runs from now till 28/10. Tickets to the Paul Auster event are very close to selling out so make sure you get yours now.

To tie in with the current Spin: The Art Of Record Design exhibition, The University of The Arts London hosts a special discussion on the future of record cover design in light of the digital age. Such a point of discussion seems pertinent when the latest edition of iTunes encourages you to scour the Internet in an effort to complete your mp3 sticker book and major label fat cats seem far too concerned with formulating a new business plan to safeguard their annual bonus to focus on possible aesthetic ramifications. Chairing the discussion is the bundle of smugness that is Andrew Collins but at least the university has enrolled some experts in field to divulge their thoughts on the subject: the iconic Peter Saville, known to most for his work during the '80s for Factory Records and current Creative Director for Manchester, is joined by EMI's in-house graphic designer Chris Peyton and Adrian Shaughnessy, designer, writer and consultant.

NB: admission to this event is free but to secure a spot you need to send an email to rsvp@arts.ac.uk. Spin: The Art Of Record Design runs till 03/10. Also of note is The London Design Festival which runs till 23/09 and London Open House which runs on 20/09 and 21/09.

As a chronicler of contemporary Austrian society, filmmaker Ulrich Seidl captures the zeitgeist of modern Austria -- and what a very dark and troubled place it seems. His 2000 debut feature Dog Days (Hundstage) hit viewers like a wet fish in the face, depicting an outwardly upstanding and conservative suburban landscape disguising a seething underbelly of sexual frustrations, psychological cruelty and universal misery. Shocking at the time perhaps, but with the subsequent revelations of the Natascha Kampusch and Josef Fritzl cases, perhaps really was onto something. In Import/Export he dispassionately presents two parallel stories of economic migrants -- a Seidl nurse who heads west in hopes of "bettering herself" in Vienna, and a failed Austrian security guard who heads east to the Ukrainian, in search of some control over his life. Infused with despair and wretchedness, once again Seidl makes substantial use of non-professional actors, pushing them close to the edge. As unflinching, dark and provocative as his vision is (particularly his treatment of women -- Dog Days scored near perfect in misogyny terms) there is a lot of unavoidable (if unpalatable) truth in his work.

NB: post screening Ulrich Seidl will be present for an on-stage interview. The ICA is also screening a season of Seidl's films from 03/10 till 30/10. New films of note released this week are The Wave and Linha de passe. Also of interest is the John Boorman and David Thomson talk and screening on 23/09 at the Barbican and the John Berger talk and screening on 25/09 at the Curzon Mayfair.

A fascination with Krautrock doesn't necessarily require a long beard, over-egged reverence or an otherwise superior air, at least not if you're Fujiya & Miyagi. Their previous LP Transparent Things won some recognition for its beautifully crafted grooves, but perhaps suffered from its own understatement. This time the Brighton-based trio have extra volume thanks to the services of a live percussionist and their recently released Lightbulbs feels altogether more confident. If allusions to Can and Neu! tickled your sensibilities, then their patient, finely textured vignettes are sure to raise a smile, especially when combined with David Best's (Miyagi's) enchanting, half-whispered choruses. And let's face it, vocals weren't always the strongest ingredient in the Krautrock mix. You might be worried they've smoothed out too many edges -- and previous singles like "Collarbone" do have a whiff of the luxury goods commercial about them -- but that's more the fault of the big brands than the music. There's also plenty of respite in the fact that their whole caper is delivered with sufficient irreverence and enough throbbing grooves to raise a wry smile.

You KF footie fans may recall that Marseille is hometown to that midflield artist, Zinedine Zidane, as immortalized now in the Gordon-Parreno film, Zidane (for you non-footie chin-strokers). But it is also the base of Robert Guediguian and has been the setting for so many of his movies that he is now referred to as the "Marseille filmmaker". Like Woody Allen's New York, this dilapidated, multiracial port town provides the backdrop for a microcosm of all our lives. Unlike Allen, Guediguian is distinctly less interested in comedy. As in Whit Stillman's trilogy, a recurring troop of actors and characters, aided by the unusual move of flashbacks cannibalized from his previous films, adds to the seamless quality of Guediguian's vision. Marseille with its spirit of dockworkers solidarity, large Algerian population and neo-fascist National Front stronghold can only be described as a perfect site for so many of the problems we face today. La ville est tranquille (2000), a tale of interlocking narratives centred around the mother of a 16-year-old drug addict, is a perfect example of Guediguian's dark vision.

NB: post-screening the critic and author John Berger will discuss the film. You can also catch Berger at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 24/10 (7:30pm) when he discusses the importance of poetry in translation with David Constantine and Rema Hammami. Other film events of note are the John Boorman and David Thomson talk and screening on 23/09 at the Barbican and the Ulrich Seidl on-stage interview and screening on 24/09 at the ICA.

Screaming dolls, giant smouldering cigarettes and a barrage of verbal abuse is what is awaiting you at the Lisson Gallery, but one should expect no less of Tony Oursler. By merging body parts with elements of popular culture to form the mutant progeny of mechanical reproduction, Oursler rarely disappoints and the mix of old and new works only serves to highlight the consistency of his aesthetic. C-Word, a giant hand open in warning sets the tone as one of the first things one sees upon entering the gallery. Untitled £ Note, a large-scale projection of a £10 note adorned with a talking Queen dominates the downstairs space, yet the much smaller X-Doll, a tiny cloth figure upon which is projected the image of a man adopting the stance of someone who is about to be frisked or whipped is much more captivating in its little nook, tucked under the stairs. Oursler proves that he can renew himself with works like Winston, Camel, Salem, Marlboro but he is still at his best with the spare talking heads projected on mundane objects such as Fucker, the most offensive bouquet of synthetic flowers you will ever encounter.

NB: runs till 03/10.

Is your life boring? Are you frustrated in your ambitions? Ever wished for a service to launder your angst and leave you in eternal sunshine? WITH is here to help, but we don't think you'll want them to. Withyou.co.uk offers a range of Life Enhancement Solutions; experiences lived on your behalf by a faceless "Agent". If you want a more exciting past, a With Agent will experience traumatic events for you and send you documentation to assimilate into your own memory. At Rokeby you can see the real-time progress of several "Solutions" commissioned by gallerists Beth and Ed Greenacre, who have willingly become part of the art. Beth sits up front obediently printing out photos of her agent at work every hour and we are told that WITH has remotely dictated the exhibition's content, sending instructions via email, but never showing their face. (If you're wondering, the anonymous puppet master behind this corporate-looking facade is supposedly an artist called Alasdair Hopwood). The language of marketing is the lingua franca here: everything is branded, titles are trademark-protected, photos come framed with logo-engraved memory sticks. It's a blizzard of talk show banalities and psychobabble doublespeak, and it strikes fear where it aims to sooth.

NB: runs till 03/10. On the last day of the show catch WITH in conversation with JJ Charlesworth and Jen Thatcher.

Getting a hair's breath away from monumental paintings from the likes of Jasper Johns and Cy Twombly is not easy. Whilst a human would breathe all over the paint at one inch from the canvas, the mechanical gaze of the camera has no such problem, as we see in Turner nominee Runa Islam's Empty The Pond To Get The Fish (2008). The film is screened inside a cinema space constructed by collaborator Tobias Putrih: a draping black waterfall made from the celluloid film that is projected within it. Inside a museum in Vienna, as it prepares for an exhibition, Islam has filmed the architecture of the building and the works becoming ready to display. Seemingly random movements of sweeps and jerks, are, in fact, an attempt to "write" with the camera, spelling out the title of the work (taken from Robert Bresson's Notes On Cinematography). Realising this, the act of reading entails a kind of motion-sickness, as we attempt to move with the camera to discern the letters. This, along with two more works here, provides an elegant dismantling of the relationships between the threesome of camera, object and viewer, as well as the inflictions of desire at play there.

NB: runs till 04/10.

Always suckers for a seasonal theme, ATP's Halloween and pre-Halloween (30/31st of October) Release The Bats event returns this year with another heavyweight line-up of acts culled from the most interesting fringes of guitar-oriented music. Ahead of their awesome-looking Nightmare Before Christmas weekender in December (curated by the relentlessly talented Mike Patton and The Melvins), RTB this year features Shellac, Les Savy Fav, Lightning Bolt, OM, Wooden Shjips and Pissed Jeans, with Andrew Weatherall adding deck presence. It's a rare chance to catch most of these bands on our shores even playing separately, so as a joint bill it's quite something. This monster of a line-up (sorry -- the only one, we promise), necessitates a 6:30pm start to accommodate all of the acts, and the breadth of the entertainment elevates this above mere gig status towards more of a one night ATP festival. It's worth noting that the actual Halloween date has already sold out, but enthusiastic stragglers can still pick up tickets for the recently added show on the 30th.

For the latest Artangel commission Seizure, British artist Roger Hiorns has transformed a depressing council flat near Elephant and Castle into an Aladdin's cave of dazzling blue crystals. Like Rachel Whiteread, whose 1993 Artangel commission House put her on the road to the Turner Prize and Artangel on the map, Hiorns has succeeded in taking a soon-to-be demolished urban environment and creating an other-worldly experience. Hiorns lined the volume of a flat in the 1930s estate with a metal tank, and poured in 90,000 litres of copper sulphate solution. Just over two weeks later the tank was drained and removed leaving a covering of copper sulphate crystals. This large-scale version of a school chemistry experiment may have gone disastrously wrong and left a bedsit full of toxic liquid. However the final result is an uplifting, sparkling blue cocoon, with large crystals covering every space including bath and light fittings. The jagged sapphire-coloured crystals are perhaps an allusion to crack city, and the use of drugs to escape the mundanity of council-flat living. Birmingham-born Hiorns grew up in a concrete jungle, and here he uses the most unlikely materials to demonstrate the truly transformative power of art.

NB: runs till 02/11. On 14/10 (6:30pm) catch Roger Hiorns and Michael Stanley in conversation.

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