If the recent slew of atrocious chick-flicks is anything to go by (Bride Wars and Confessions Of A Shopaholic anyone?), it would seem Hollywood execs have a pretty low estimation of women and their taste in films. Perhaps it's because they largely let men write the scripts and do the directing. This week, the 5th Birds Eye View Film Festival challenges the status quo, screening an array of films by exciting and innovative women filmmakers, and there's nary a rom-com or chick flick in sight. It's also great fun -- alongside the screenings are master-classes in filmmaking, club-nights and even a bit of stand-up (yet another creative area women usually get side-lined from).

The theme of this year's festival is sex on screen, and duly one of the many programmes is entitled Screen Seductresses: Vamps, Vixens & Femmes Fatales. Make sure you catch the screening of silent movie Salome, which comes accompanied by a live set from Bishi. There's also a discussion on erotica in film debated among others by former Erotic Review editrice Rowan Pelling.

Other highlights includes a special special Q&A screening of Oscar-nominated Frozen River, a screening of Sugar, about a Dominican baseball star, by the directors of the acclaimed Ryan Gosling vehicle, Half Nelson. There will also be a screening of Wendy And Lucy, starring indie darling Michelle Williams (see the review here). On the opening gala night, catch artist's Love You More and later in the week a masterclass dedicated to the work of groundbreaking director Mary Harron, of American Psycho and I Shot Andy Warhol fame.

You won't be left in any doubt about women filmmakers' ability to make fresh, exciting cinema. If only Hollywood would get on board.

NB: runs from 05/03 till 13/03 at both the ICA and the BFI Southbank.

Whilst it might not exactly be set down in stone it's a fairly accepted fact that having the word penis in your band name is a pretty good way of curtailing any mainstream success. Hence the sighs of relief that no doubt went round Crazy P's label's office when they decided to drop the "enis" from their name. Name change in full effect, the Nottingham based quintet have gone onto headline festivals and sell out shows with their own brand of low slung disco-punk-funk. Start the weekend early this week and catch them playing live at this exclusive one-off show in Islington, hosted by the increasingly adventurous Soundcrash. Support comes from fellow Notts electro producer Line, currently riding high with the release of his debut album and new single, raucous London based disco punks Shock Defeat and KultureFlash's very own John Power and Tony Poland filling in the gaps between the bands with a mish-mash of disco, electro and new wave.

Opening this week -- and getting a special screening at the Birds Eye View Film Festival -- is director Kelly Reichardt's quietly affecting Wendy And Lucy. Ostensibly a story about a young gamine runaway (played by the lovely Michelle Williams) and her dog (Lucy), it is also the portrait of a depressed small town in Oregon. Shot in muted colours, this melancholy film follows Wendy as she gets stuck in a neglected, post-industrial town after her car breaks down en route to Alaska, where she is hoping to find a new life. Arrested following an attempt to steal a can of dog food and an apple from a local store, she spends the days after her release trying to find the errant Lucy, who had gone missing. In true US-indie style, not very much happens but viewers will be moved by Wendy's resilience, her encounters with some of the kinder inhabitants of the town and her eventual reuniting with Lucy.

NB: Wendy And Lucy is released in London on 06/03. Also of note this week is the release of Watchmen and the Birds Eye View Film Festival (05/03 till 13/03).

Previously awarded winner of Outstanding Choreography and Outstanding Female Dancer in the Australian Dance Awards 2006, Twelfth Floor is certainly worthy of the reputation that precedes it. Tanja Liedtke trained in Madrid and the UK before moving to Sydney, a notably elegant, versatile performer and promising choreographer. Shortly after being appointed artistic director of Sydney Dance Company in 2007, she was killed in a road accident, aged 29. This performance celebrates her dynamism, humour and originality. Five dancers, who have worked with Australian Dance Theatre and DV8, are confined in an unexplained institutional setting. This enforced proximity adds inevitable intensity to their relationships, but rather than being unnecessarily dramatic the development of the piece is carefully controlled. The dancers demonstrate technical strength and physical theatre skills, as the choreography navigates an emotive trajectory of despair, violence, and tenderness. Powerful and quietly sophisticated, this explosive work is truly exciting.

NB: Twelfth Floor is performed on both 07/03 and 08/03.

LA based label Stones Throw have encountered something akin to a curve back towards popularity lately. Known to most for the excellent debut album from Quasimoto and the subsequent pandering of producer Madlib and his sloppy productions, Stones Throw threw a curveball last year with the release of Welcome by the improbably named James Pants. A strange brew of '80s electro, garage rock and stripped down hiphopery, Welcome was lovingly received by those with open ears and can perhaps be seen as proof that the label are attempting to move away from straight up hip-hop towards the music that influenced this much flogged horse. The exciting prospect of a full Pants Pants band is the centre piece of tonight's Stones Throw showcase at reinvigorated Shoreditch venue Cargo with support from the equally improbably named Mayer Hawthorne, who fits a lot of '60s throwback soul into his somewhat petite frame. Providing the requisite turntable trickery is the super awesome Dam Funk who digs deep into the boogified '80s electro sound and label boss Peanut Butter Wolf who will intriguingly be performing a live AV set a la Hexstatic.

Peter Coffin is becoming rather adept at playing the role of enthusiastic science presenter that some of us might recognise from BBC2 circa 1984. In Nicholas Bourriaud's Altermodern: The Tate Triennial we see Coffin "bringing ART to LIFE through the magic of SCIENCE!", with Tate Britain: a digital light installation projected onto a room full of paintings. In Coffin's new commission for the Barbican's Curve Gallery, however, it is perhaps the other way around -- he has attempted to create artworks hewn from developments in technology. Using 3D scanning technology, Coffin has made adaptations to objects before reforming them with 3D printers. The original object and its hideous progeny are then presented alongside one another. A human skull sits beside a model of itself inside out, and a can of beer beside one seen through "beer goggles". If these aren't mind bending enough, the sculptures are accompanied by a huge multi-screen film installation covering the Curve's entire outer wall, featuring a Japanese ornamental garden filmed using a radio-controlled helicopter. So that's: "How for Now!"

NB: runs till 10/05.

Watchmen is set in an alternative 1985: a bullish US, boasting a fifth-term "Tricky Dickie" Nixon is still fighting the Cold War and the nuclear clock edging ever closer to midnight. When one of his old crime-fighting buddies is murdered, renegade Costumed Adventurer Rorschach contacts the now outlawed and retired Watchmen. Alan Moore, who wrote the comic book, famously declared his work unfilmable. Big names came and went until fate chose director Zack Snyder and on the whole, Snyder's done a pretty good job: visually the movie seriously rocks. Opinion as to whether the characters, though well rendered and very well played by the cast, remain as compelling or resonant as in the hugely elegant and complex comic may differ between those who have and haven't read it. Poignant moments in the original comic, though painstakingly reconstructed onscreen perhaps struggled at times to retain their relevance when detached from much of their back-stories. That said, our IMAX experience was so immersive that writing this review is like trying to relate a dream; we found ourselves having to turn our heads to see what was happening on the other side of the screen. Magic. Blow your mind watching the Watchmen.

NB: Watchmen is released in London on 06/02 and screens at the BFI IMAX till 02/04. Also of note this week is the release of Wendy And Lucy and the Birds Eye View Film Festival (05/03 till 13/03).

Few film directors have exerted such a fascination on cineastes as Stanley Kubrick. A reclusive, obsessive perfectionist, Kubrick would spend years researching and developing ideas, and was notorious for his excessively long shooting schedules. Technically his films were groundbreaking, and visually they are masterpieces of design and framing. But the biggest fascination is with Kubrick himself -- what kind of mind would bring us HAL (2001: A Space Odyssey), superimpose Beethoven with aversion therapy and bowler hats while twinning glasses of milk with violence (A Clockwork Orange), create the Vietnam War in Docklands (Full Metal Jacket) and conjure up the axe-wielding, bathroom-door destroyer Jack Torrence (The Shining)? Kubrick was always an enigma in life, and in the decade since his death, he has continued to exert a powerful fascination. As part of the extensive BFI retrospective of his work this winter, this event examines Kubrick's famously cool and detached approach to sex in his films, centring on his final film Eyes Wide Shut. Critic and Kubrick expert Michael Ciment will be joined by Sight & Sound editor Nick James, academic Linda Ruth Williams and critic Tony Rayns in an attempt to decode Kubrick's final cinematic vision.

NB: also at the BFI Southbank be sure to catch Jane and Louise Wilson's short film Unfolding The Aryan Papers which came out of the artists' research at the Stanley Kubrick Archive (till 26/04). In addition catch Barry Lyndon at the BFI (screens till 17/03).

Following her acclaimed adaptation of Pride And Prejudice starring Keira Knightley, novelist Deborah Moggach seems to be happily nestling herself alongside such nationally trusted writers as Andrew Davis. But the BBC's serialisation of The Diary Of Anne Frank was always going to be an especially daunting task for the author of Tulip Fever and the more recent In The Dark. Adapting the iconic diaries was playing with the lives of real people, the minutia of whose daily existence came to resonate on an international level, and to represent the fate of more than 6 million others. To get the tension just right between the domestic dramas, teenage emotion, historical and political implications, maintaining a balance between both the humour and tragedy of the situation, plus keeping the interest in the characters' lives in the moment and not just in the light of their fates must have been a mammoth challenge. In aid of the international writers society PEN, Moggach talks in more detail about the weight of responsibility on her shoulders when working on this serialisation, and the specific challenges which she feared the most, and overcame to critical and popular success.

Herman Poole Blount -- aka Sun Ra -- passed on to a more celestial realm in 1993, yet his legend lingers thanks to the endorsements of hip young(ish) musicians like those of the Chicago post-rock scene and our own Kieran Hebden. The late Alice Coltrane (wife of John) is enjoying a similar posthumous renown (Paul Weller even penned a tribute song to her); like the music of Sun Ra, her signature blend of transcendent, string-caressed "cosmic" jazz and screeds on Eastern mysticism offer a wormhole straight back to the apogee of '60s free jazz, free-spiritedness. Founder of The Specials and 2 Tone Records, dentally-challenged Midlands' legend Jerry Dammers is another noted celebrant of the musically exotic yesteryear, and, on the 13th anniversary of The Special's Anglo-ska debut 7 inch, "Gangsters", he remains in thrall to vibrant musical hybrids. This event features Dammer's 18-piece "Spatial AKA" ensemble paying tribute to the work of Ra and Coltrane by, typically, mashing their sounds with those of dub innovator Coxsone Dodd, exotica pioneer Martin Denny and a host of others. Costumes, theatrics and eye-popping visuals will mix with ska, reggae, hip-hop, dubstep, rock and outer-spatial sounds to create, according to the press blurb, "an unforgettable ride across the galaxies", Mr Blount would surely approve.

NB: this event is close to selling out so book quickly.

An intriguing series run by SPNM, this edition of The Sound Source spans a wild field of audio art intermingled with film, poetry and dance. Cellist Anton Lukoszevieze curates and interacts with the experimental polarities. In his own words: '"The multiplicity of today's cultural spheres is rich and varied; Dick Higgins' '60s definition of intermedia is becoming part of the vernacular. Crazy Wisdom is an evening of new and older avant works typified by a visionary edge". Avant-harpist Rhodri Davies, a fixture on the international improvisational scene, leads the way with deconstructions of the expected listening experience one has of the normally genteel harp, sometimes subjecting the instrument to the elements. As well as interactions, Davies will perform a new work by composer Nicholas Peters. Joining Lukoszevieze are Lithuanian audio-visual artist Arturas Bumsteinas, Sharon Morris and Rachel Krische. Morris is a Welsh multi-media artist and poet, and Krische is a celebrated contemporary dancer. Framing these sets are shorts by US experimental filmmakers Stan Brakhage, Bruce Baillie, beat-era visionary Wallace Berman, and the radical Jayne Parker. Network hub group Music Orbit will introduce these many elements of carefully controlled artistic anarchy.

The Institut Francais plays host to one of the most courageous and outspoken figures in French public life, the politician and feminist campaigner, Simone Veil. Veil's celebrated memoir, Une vie, which tells the story of her survival in the Auschwitz concentration camp through to her rise as an outspoken politician, has sold over a million copies in her home country. Veil became the first female minister under the Fifth Republic, and is famous for overseeing the legalization of abortion in 1975. She was a fervent believer and promoter of the European project and was elected as the first president of the European Parliament in 1979. Her enormous contribution to France's cultural and political life was recently recognized with her election to the prestigious Academie Francaise, making her only the fifth woman ever elected. In January this year she was awarded Grand Officier de la Legion d'honneur. Veil's appearance in London marks the long-awaited publication of the English translation of her memoirs. She will present extracts from her life story and discuss her extraordinary career with BBC journalist Madeleine Holt.

A wooden skirt that collapses into a coffee table, a dress made out of materials used in aircraft construction that changes shape and a dress that disappears into a hat -- no wonder Hussein Chalayan was twice named British Designer Of The Year. Chalayan's work, which rarely focuses on practicality (who needs to sit or breathe when looking this cool?), is quintessential London innovation. How much of his inspiration is derived from his edgy-louche working environment of East London? The East End has long been known for its thriving visual arts scene with the Vyner Street galleries and artists studios, but it has also become infamous as the refuge of all conceptual fashion creators, from Boudicca to Christopher Kane, and from Luella to Eley Kishimoto. It's also the location of choice for some important architectural practices such as a Zaha Hadid, FOA, Adjaye Associates and FAT. What is it about East London that attracts the "right brain" types of all trades? The panel, which includes Chalayan, Farshid Moussavi of FOA, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, writer and journalist, and promising young writer Bola Agbaje will attempt to define creative London through what promises to be a sparked-up discussion. Let's hope at least one speaker will wear one of Chalayan's LED light dresses or one of his Swarovski crystal confections.

NB: the event is presented in association with East 2009. Hussein Chalayan at the Design Museum runs till 17/05.

You may not like him. You may think it's bull that he got away with half-fabricating his critically-acclaimed, glamorous memoir of drug-addiction and recovery, A Million Little Pieces, generating higher book sales and the kind of widespread fame that only Oprah's hot-seat can stir up in the process. You might think he comes off as a bit self-righteous in his quest to become "the greatest literary writer of our generation". Or maybe you're just jealous that his website is a hell of a lot cooler than your unpublished ass. But what's most irksome about Frey is that he sure can write. Catch him in London at Miller's Academy or the ICA (at Miller's the accompanying drinks and dinner offer a rare opportunity for a cosy chat) promoting his latest surefire success Bright Shiny Morning: a tale of the city of Los Angeles told in Frey's inimitably frank style, through snippets of the lives of residents who range from the usual tramps and runaways to film stars and politicos. No matter how much you will yourself to hate it, Frey captures the city's voice, mood and energy through minute, unrelated details, creating an addictive mise-en-scene from snatches of life and barely-there dialogue. On the first page: "Nothing in this book should be considered accurate or reliable."

NB: for those of you with tighter budgets then you can also catch James Frey at the ICA on 12/03 (7pm) when he is in conversation with Alex Clark (Editor of Granta).

The major record labels have thrown all their juggernautic weight behind female-performed electro-pop for 2009. That doesn't mean it's all formulaic, irritating and cynical. But although Anita Blay, aka Thecocknbullkid, is an exciting talent and clearly adept at chorus hooks and drum machines, the excitement on this bill might actually come from the very pigeonhole Messrs Big Bucks and Monster Records tell us is dead. We're talking about boyish guitar quartet Your Twenties, who've cooked up a storming blend of Strokes jangliness and Beach Boys harmonies that makes you remember why blokeish guitar bands (particularly those starting with The) became such an obsession and eventually blew out in a typical bout of major label hype overload. But they're not entirely fresh off the boat scruffs, since among their number is Joe Mount from the increasingly excellent odd balls Metronomy, which probably explains their slightly off-beat, light-touch sound. Already hyped by indie king Steve Lamacq and given somewhat off the mark comparisons with Haircut 100, they will no doubt have a decent stab at beating the odds stacked against them by critics and executives. It's also worth mentioning London beat trio Plugs, who do a rather nice line in jagged synths and fuzz.

If we are to believe Lindsay Seers' seductive narratives, her life has been filled with paranormal mystique. In Extramission 6 (Black Maria), her work in Nicholas Bourriaud's Altermodern: The Tate Triennial, a black replica model of Thomas Edison's Black Maria houses a film in which friends and family of Seers talk about the artist's life as a human camera, developing images in her mouth with a black bag over her head. This introspective process finds Seers depressed -- only able to train her sights on the darker elements of life, leading her to attempt life as a projector instead. In It has to be this way at Matt's Gallery, we enter a large cobalt blue architectural structure featuring huge multi-pointed star shapes, to see two identical circular film projections -- reminiscent of eye holes. A spine-vibratingly low resonating male voiceover describes an obsessive and destructive love for Seers' step-sister, Christine Parkes, who disappeared following a difficult recovery from a moped accident. This narrative is twisted around a history of the sisters' collaborative artwork and obsession with Queen Christina Of Sweden. Did Christine Parkes even exist? It doesn't matter -- by the time you leave she will loom large and bright.

NB: runs till 15/03.

Mice skeletons, wasp's nests and a giant gorilla all feature in the unique work of British artist Alastair Mackie. Not waving but drowning at The David Roberts Foundation takes its title from a 1957 Stevie Smith poem. Mackie presents three new specially commissioned sculptures: Untitled (+/-), a monumental wooden loom that magically spins yarn from mouse hair, juxtaposed with a sinister pile of mice skeletons; a wooden dolls abode House constructed from wasp and hornet nests, reminiscent of the ominous residence in Hitchcock's Psycho; and with Metamorphoses Mackie tops it all off with a mirrored reinterpretation of a taxidermy bell jar, giving the exhibition an overall feeling of a surreal Brothers Grimm fairytale. Mackie's unusual choice of materials puts him in a similar category as other young eco-artists producing environmentally conscious art such as Polly Morgan and Claire Morgan. Concurrently, for Mimetes Anon at the Economist Plaza, Mackie has created a hyper-real ape, a kind of Darwinian version of a Ron Mueck sculpture, which has bemused and amused passers-by since its installation. This exciting young artist is definitely one to watch.

NB: Not waving but drowning runs till 28/03 and Mimetes Anon runs till 17/04. Mackie also currently has an exquisite chess set crafted from insects on display in The Art Of Chess at the Reykjavik Art Museum.

KultureFlash is a free, weekly newsletter covering contemporary culture in and around London. Each week we track down some of the more unusual and interesting events taking place in the capital and deliver them straight to your inbox. Featuring art, gigs, films, talks, clubs and more -- we are committed to bringing you an eclectic mix of the most stimulating events in London.

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