Tuesday 1 April (7:30pm)

@ Barbican Centre, Barbican Centre, EC2 (020.7638.8891) Tube: Barbican

Coppola famously said that the advent of camcorders would mean that "One day we shall see the work by a young little girl from Ohio, who will change the way we approach cinema". So far, the post-celluloid messiah has yet to be revealed but mini-handheld cameras have certainly enabled much experimentation and produced films that couldn't have been made otherwise. In This World is such a film. Shot on one digital video camera and no cinematic lights, it charts the journey from Pakistan to Britain of two young Afghan refugees. Brave and free-flowing, it is award-winning filmmaking, reminiscent in style of Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Kandahar. Writer Tony Grisoni, never really had a script and many of the places, people and events are real. Not only does Maverick British director Michael Winterbottom blur the line between fact and fiction but more importantly, the worthy/unworthy immigrant one. Like the 12 year-old character he plays, Jamal Udin Torabi was born in the Shamshatoo camp and, after filming, travelled back from Pakistan to the UK on his own. He will have to leave before he's 18. Roughly beautiful, this film demonstrates the true power of the digital revolution. We hope the girl in Ohio gets to see it.

NB: Winterbottom will be on hand for a Q&A after the screening of the film. In this World is to be screened at the ICA until Wed 30/04 check their site for full times and details.

Wednesday 2 April

@ various cinemas across London

A buddy movie about two psychiatric patients moving out of care and into a government apartment, could have been rather shameful... Pitch: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest meets Dumb & Dumber? So despite the 2001 Oscar nomination, the stories of Kevin Spacey snapping up the US remake rights, and a prequel currently in production and... ok there is As Good As It Gets. We at KF were slightly anxious when we started watching Elling. Guess what... it's really rather good. Norwegian director Petter Naess follows his debut, Absolute Hangover with not a laugh-out-loud comedy but something that's definitely enjoyable -- it's feel good yet astonishingly unsentimental. Both leads (Per Christian Ellefsen and Sven Nordin), who were in the original stage version, give tender and believable performances of men living on the fringes of sanity but it's always very clear that this is comedy and the darker realities of such social isolation are never really hammered home. It's a quirky, little gem. So Kevin, "No!" Stick to Triggerstreet and leave Elling to the Norwegians.

Thursday 3 April (6 - 8:30pm)

@ MW projects, 43B Mitchell St., EC1 (020.7251.3194) Tube: Old St.

Marine Hugonnier is a French artist based in London. Last year a trip to Alaska brought back stunning images of tomorrow taken across the International Date Line. This year Hugonnier travelled to Afghanistan in search of a new project. Ariana is composed of a S16 film and a series of photographs of Kabul and the Pandjsher Valley. Ariana investigates the relationship between landscape and history. It explores ideas of resistance and utopia and questions the tools of cinema and western ideas of viewpoint. Kabul has experienced 23 years of war with the invasion and collapse of Communism and Fundamentalism. The Pandjsher Valley, thanks to its mountain range and fertility, has resisted both and even today remains a state within a state. Definitely worth a trip East to visit both the Chisenhale Gallery and MW projects.

NB: MW projects will be exhibiting the photographes, it opens Thu 03/03 (PV: 6 - 8:30pm) and continues until 31/05. Chisenhale Gallery premieres the film Tue 08/04 (6:30 - 8:30pm) and continues through 18/05.

Thursday 3 April (6:40pm)

@ Curzon Soho, 93-107 Shaftesbury Ave., W1 (020.7439.4805) Tube: Leicester Square/Piccadilly

Relationships built upon traumatic circumstance seldom last, so Keanu Reeves told Sandra Bullock at the end of Speed. Now, Open Hearts is not Speed; made according to Dogme principles, Susanne Bier's accidental, heartbreak romance is far from any film that would vaguely entertain the notion of employing either Bullock or Reeves. Rather, this Danish cast turns in a strong performance, bolstering the simple but effective cinematic technique that Dogme demands and Bier interprets. There is a starkness to the cinematography and directness to the editing that allows this otherwise simple tale to be told. A doctor, whose wife accidentally paralyses a man, winds up having an affair with the man's fiancee as he tries to comfort her. As expected, the children get upset. What are they to do? Instead of the gloss to be found around Bullock-Reeves, Open Hearts prises open the difficult and twisty nature of human relationships. E! awarded this flick a C+ because of it's "unremitting bleakness," which is enough reason to see this film, another being t's bound to be good!

NB: The screening will be accompanied by a Q&A with Director Susanne Bier.

Thursday 3 April (7pm)

@ Underworld, 174 Camden High St., NW1 (020.7482.1932) Tube: Camden Town

WARNING!

Extreme electronic and acoustic music -- please attend with due caution...

If you like nothing better than an evening filled with extreme noise, sonic sounds, filthy feedback and general overdriven madness, then look no further for a night of sculptured musical mayhem. In his HDJ (hard disc jockey) guise, is multi-disciplinary artist and disruptive experimentalist, Russell Haswell, who has DJ'ed with Autechre, performed with Aphex Twin and released the album Satanstornade with Japanese noise merchant Masami Akita of Merzbow. Making their debut UK performances on the night, are drone bliss kings Boris, and Kill Rock Stars man Thrones (ex-Melvins and Earth). Also joining them will be the infamous Sunno))), providing some dirge rock music(k) "for the express elevator to Hell".

NB: For a pre-All Tomorrow's Parties evening of mutant hate-pop and extreme noise terror, Camden's Underworld is the place to dwell tonight.

Thursday 3 April (7:30pm)

@ Shepherds Bush Empire, Shepherds Bush Green, W12 (020.7771.2000) Tube: Shepherds Bush

The (almost) one-man Society is back, currently promoting Us -- the latest addition to the band's discography, released on 03/03/03. The Mull Historical Society form a band that manages to squeeze every possible instrument into a single song; bordering on the over-produced but still crafting memorable melodies that we might associate with the refreshment from a Sodastream after a hard summer's day playing Swingball. Yes, this music is beautiful buttery popcorn; but underneath the lashings of creamy instruments beat healthy songs with the qualities of output from fellow Scots Aztec Camera. It's a bit like the banana in an ice-cream sundae.

Giveaway: We have three copies of Us to give away. They'll go to three randomly picked subscribers who can tell us names of the band members.

Thursday 3 April (7:30pm)

@ English National Opera

The idea of a new opera sounds surprising, surely they shouldn't exist in this century of club culture and sampling. The ENO specialises in English versions of old classics which seems difficult enough as it is, but now, they're putting on an opera of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, that dystopian classic set in Cambridge, Mass. of the future, where women have lost their rights to Christian fundamentalists and are now just baby-making machines. Does love finally conquer? Will human rights be restored? Are the Thunderbirds gonna be called in? All this set to good tunes... Taught and banned in schools, Atwood's novel certainly has fallen in with classics like Brave New World and 1984. Here, composed by Dane Poul Ruder -- the first commission by the Royal Danish Opera in 34 years -- it debuted in Copenhagen in 2000. At present, this seems altogether appropriate given the paranoia gripping the world, and the rights to privacy and freedom of choice -- individual and otherwise -- seemingly being eroded. With a best-selling book, a film scripted by Harold Pinter, starring Natasha Richardson no less, and now this opera, all that's left is the Disney cartoon?!?

NB: This is the British premiere of The Handmaid's Tale and it will run for a mere 7 nights (April 3,5,9,11,14 & 25 at 7:30pm & May 2 at 7:30pm).

Thursday 3 April (9pm)

@ ICA, The Mall, SW1 (020.7930.3647) Tube: Charing Cross/Piccadilly

Out of the battlefields of '40s Europe came new recording equipment and new music. Sounds could be captured, dismembered and constructed again endlessly, and one name given to this cutting and splicing technique was Musique Concrete. Along with synthesised and computerised music, it belongs to the world of electronic music and we know how big that is now. Well, some of the godfathers and godmothers of the movement that allowed us to call things electroclash, industrial folk, or hardcore country (?!) can be found every Thursday for the whole of April at the ICA with all events eventually being streamed on BBC Radio 3. Now this Thursday has a magic line-up of masters of the craft Bernard Parmegiani, Christian Calon and Farmers Manual, brought to you by the Sonic Arts Network. Expect noises, backwards, forwards, cut up, repeated, interrupted and buzz crackle bleeps. If you think you know about music then you should go and learn more, even Aphex Twin has said his thank yous.

Giveaway We have a pair of tickets for both the opening night (Thu 03/04) and the closing night (Tue 01/05 -- Gregg Wagstaff, Chris Watson and Francis Lopez) to give away. They'll go to one randomly picked subscriber who can tell us what recording instrument the Nazis invented that became one of the first electronic music tools?

Friday 4 April (10.30am - 6pm)

@ Tate Britain, Millbank, SW1 (020.7887.8008) Tube: Pimlico

From the monochromatic Chromophilia of David Batchelor, to the colour chic of Jim Lambie, from the visual deconstruction of Cornelia Parker, to the aesthetic existentialism of Rachel Whiteread, the conceptual Pop of Richard Hamilton to slacker paint of Dexter Dalwood, Tate Britain's Triennial Days like These certainly offers breath. And the opportunity to add air to that breath is just what this one-day conference is all about. Judith Nesbitt ( formerly of Eyestorm and the Whitechapel, now Head of Tate Displays) and Jonathan Watkins (Ikon Gallery director ), the Triennial co-curators will be amongst the speakers shouting down the naysayers. Touted as a Brit-artworld State of the Union address, and a resistance to yestercenturies Britart, is Days like These -- like The Hives and The White Stripes -- gonna be the new Rock 'n' Roll? A mixed panel of artists, writers and curators, this should be very interesting given that most factions have very different views on what the other half does!

Other speakers include, critic John Slyce; Goldsmiths art historian Ian Jeffrey; Phaidon commissioning editor and critic Gilda Williams; artists Nathan Coley and David Cunningham; and critic, Evening Standard columnist and Slade lecturer, Andrew Renton will chair. For tickets call 020.7887.8888 or email ticketing@tate.org.uk.

NB: On Wed 02/04 (6:30 - 8pm), archaeologist Colin Renfrew and Cornelia Parker will have a discussion regarding the relationship between art and archaeology. This event will be chaired by art critic Richard Cork. For tickets call 020.7887.8888 or email ticketing@tate.org.uk

Giveaway We have a pair of tickets to give away. It'll go to one randomly picked subscriber who can tell us the name of the gallery in the West End that Rachel Whiteread recently had a show at.

Friday 4 April (6pm)

@ Curzon Soho, 93-107 Shaftesbury Ave., W1 (020.7439.4805) Tube: Leicester Square/Piccadilly

Did anyone else think it was a little bit odd that the Oscar for best Film in a foreign language was awarded to Germany? We've heard of film-making collectives but that's taking the concept a bit far, surely? And if that's a bit odd, what about both Y Tu Mama Tambien and Talk to Her being nominated (and Almodovar winning) for best original screenplay, but not best film, even in a foreign language? Or were they so good the Academy just forgot they were foreign? And no nomination at all for City of God? Might it be that the Oscars are a load of old bollocks? Anyway, in film as so often in football, it was Germany that won, for Caroline Link's Nowhere in Africa, the story of German Jewish exiles in British-ruled Kenya during World War II. This is a film that takes the Holocaust genre out of the ghettoes and into the heart of Africa and in doing so, adds a new twist on themes that are familiar, if always worth reiterating. The exiles here being persecuted refugees, and enemy aliens, but also, at the same time, colonial masters.

NB: The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Stefanie Zweig, whose extraordinary life story this is, and on whose autobiographical novel the film is based.

Giveaway: We have a pair of tickets to give away. They'll go to one randomly picked subscriber who can tell us the name of Zweig's novel.

Friday 4 April (7pm)

@ Shepherds Bush Empire, Shepherds Bush Green, W12 (020.7771.2000) Tube: Shepherds Bush

Orishas represent a reunification of two divergent arms of Afro-diasporic musical evolution. Hip-Hop beats and rhymes engage afro-Cuban instrumentation and melodies; think Buena Vista Social Club meets Jurassic 5. Their two albums A Lo Cubano and Emigrante, replete with radio-friendly hooks and sing-song choruses, have established Orishas as the poster-boys for Spanish-language Hip-Hop. Far from being sugary-sweet, there's an electrifying edge to the music courtesy of well-chosen Hip-Hop beats, polyrhythmic conga-driven percussion, scratch DJ turntablism, and socially-conscious lyrics. This combination naturally makes for a great live show, with Ruzzo, Yotuel, Flaco-Pro, and Roldan (all originally Cuban, met in Paris, and now residing in Spain) switching from swaggering Hip-Hop posturing to sinuous salsa shimmying with consummate ease.

NB: Also performing is Spain's Carlos Jean, a DJ, remixer and producer, sometimes described as "Spain's William Orbit." Jean's first album, Back To The Earth was a mix of breakbeat, jungle, and house; his second, Planet Jean, incorporates an eclectic collage of Hip-Hop, samba, funk and lounge music.

Friday 4 April (11pm - 6am)

@ Fortress Studios, 34-38 Provost Street, N1 (020.7251.6200 ) Tube: Old Street

If in need of a hefty electro fix this weekend, there will be no better place to score than at Friday night's Haywire. Break yourself in gently in the upstairs bar, have a drink and chill to the sounds of dub and reggae dealt up by Sidney le Sarge and Sherman. Meanwhile, down in the basement, you can score nu skool breaks, straight-up-techno and electro-highs from the Cabbage Boy himself, Si Begg. Plus there's machine funk dealt up by head honcho Andrew Weatherall and the godfather, Silicon Scally supplying the funky electro.

Saturday 5 April (11pm - 5am)

@ The Premises, 201-205 Hackney Rd., E2 (020.7729.7593 ) Tube: Old St.

Don't like clubs? Prefer a more laid-back, friendly, party night out? If these sound like familiar symptoms, then try a dose of WANG (first Saturday of every month at Hackney Road's rehearsal/recording studio, The Premises). WANG can be used for the relief of dancefloor withdrawal, as well as depression induced by the nine-to-five and mainstream club intolerance. WANG contains the active ingredients Ed Chamberlain (Norfunk), K Rock (Rephlex), Primeaudial (Jon Reynolds + Chris Moodi) and Plaid (Warp). Do not take if you are allergic to fun, friendly people, or good music. In the unlikely event that side effects occur, return next month!

Giveaway We have three copies of Plaid's just released CD, Parts In The Post to give away. They'll go to three randomly picked subscribers who can tell us who many people make up Plaid.

Sunday 6 April (Daily 10am - 6pm; Wed until 9pm)

@ National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, WC2 (020.7747.2885) Tube: Charing Cross

The size of a Ron Mueck piece can have a strange psychological impact on a person. Dead Dad, the sculpture that really pushed Mueck into the public arena as a fine artist when shown in Sensation (first shown at the he Royal Academy, 1997), is an unsettlingly small piece. While the giant Pregnant Woman, made for his latest show at the National Gallery, places the viewer in the position of a small child, emphasising the actual weight and the burden of the baby she is carrying. The work in this exhibition, made during his residency as an Associate Artist at the National Gallery, is in response to the museum's collection and is loosely based on the theme of Mother and Child. Having been concerned with the lack of realism of young children represented in the National Gallery's collection, Mueck has produced some hauntingly life-like work including the intriguing Mother and Child. It is quite ironic when visiting this show, to think of Mueck as part of the scandal that surrounded Sensation, but it is the realism of the work that creates this contradiction. It is too close for comfort, but it is precisely this that ensures its accessibility.

NB: This exhibition ends 22/06. Also, when you check out this show make sure you see the Titian one.

Giveaway: We have three Mueck catalogues to give away. They'll go to three randomly picked subscribers who can tell us what was Mueck's original profession before he became known as an artist.

Ends Saturday 5 April (Daily 7:30pm; Matinee 3pm)

@ Southwark Playhouse

This play written by Cuban Virgilio Pinera (who has been touted as being Cuba's best kept secret) is the first English translation (by Kate Eaton). It has been cooling its heels since 1958 when it was first shown in Havana to the wider delectation of the theatre going populace. Ten minutes in however, and you could be forgiven for mistaking the unfolding events for The Importance of Being Ernest, which is due in no small part to the wry and dandyish execution of the best man Luis, by Colin Carmichael. We find our bride and groom garrotting themselves upon a host of manners and social etiquettes, quite astoundingly initiated by an unwitting pair of "droopy tits." In the absurdist tradition to which Pinera belongs, the consequences of this are suitably bizarre. Although the etiquette has aged poorly, the piece has been given a vibrant choreographic injection by Scarlet Theatre, which makes for a curiously invigorating experience.

NB: The run ends this Sat 05/04.

Friday 11 April (10pm)

@ Tate Britain, Millbank, SW1 (020.7887.8008) Tube: Pimlico

One of the most pleasing things about Tate & Egg Live's collaboration, is to make greyer that line between performance art and cabaret, which is what's already occuring, now that the MTV generation have matured into the Performance Artworld. When Performances were called Happenings in the '60s, they were terribly earnest and determined to be High Art with a drive to return to content and shy away from the market, now the performative has slowly crept back, and humour -- though apart of the sixties -- and entertainment is just as important. After all, what else could motivate one to create a musical about the life of Joseph Beuys, as Sam Basu and Shahin Afrassiabi have done with "Diamond Dust", or David Thorpe's choreographic spectacle, "The Mighty Lights Community Project". Alternatively, Laura Cull is gonna interprete that classic Persian character Salome. This night, The Goldern Resistance built around the idea of artists who have constructed mythologies from fragments of popular culture, should be a tasty little morsel, at turns challenging and entertaining.

NB: Other artists include: Petcar (aka Sam Basu, Shahin Afrassiabi, Gower Ramsey, Lali Chetwynd, Laura Cull). Although this event is free, the first performance at 8pm is sold out so call Tate ticketing on 020.7887 8888 to secure a spot at the 10pm performance. There will also be a late night opening of the Tate Triennial Days Like These, drinks will also be available at the Egg bar.

Sunday 13 April (6:30pm)

@ BFI London Imax, 1 Charlie Chaplin Walk, South Bank, SE1 (020.7902.1234 ) Tube: Waterloo

Going boldy where no man has gone before is what this Jim has done! Although, Titanic, the Terminators 1 and 2 split no infinitives, they certainly did break many box-office records as well as technological ones. Known for his obsessive perfectionism, the former Mr. Linda Hamilton and producer of Dark Angel, has described the first Terminator as his most perfect movie: the right combination of script, effects, theme, as well as least input from his paymasters. Afterall, who else could have coaxed the best performance of an inanimate object out of the Schwarzenegger. More a master of adventure rather than romance, Cameron has still garnered a handful of Oscars for Titanic -- with the tide of the box office and against that of criticism. Now Ghosts of the Abyss in typical Cameron "groundbreaking IMAX 3D" format with a team of experts and Bill Paxton thrown-in, is a documentary about his own personal journey to the wreck of the Titanic. What a geezer! Just how many powerdirectors are there with their own drinking games! Certainly not Scorcese nor Coppola, and definitely not Oliver Stone!

NB: Following this screening, as part of The Guardian Interview, Cameron will be speaking to Adrian Wootton. Do prepare and ask difficult questions!

Ends Wednesday 16 April (Mon to Fri 10am - 6pm; Thu till 7pm; Sat 10am - 5pm )

@ Haunch of Venison, 6 Haunch of Venison Yard, W1 (020.7495.5050) Tube: Bond St.

Wim Wenders -- yes he of Paris, Texas ('84) fame -- began shooting photographs in '83 while location scouting for that film, and if you thought that Wim had lost his vim somewhere after Wings of Desire ('87), do catch this exhibition for a small surprise. Perhaps where cinematic success has taken the edge off his human stories, his eye for scale and sense of magnitude has not been shaken in the photographic medium. Like the films, these photographs are epic, both in size and scale of vision. Huge mountainscapes, colour-saturated deco shopfronts, even shots of Ground Zero, they record landscapes and humanscapes alike; both a documentation of his travels as filmmaker and epic-scale artwork. His themes seem existential and documentary, and his success rate -- like his films -- vary. Some succeed merely through their scale, while others, though smaller, give humanity greater perspective on their place in the world -- poignant, especially given the events in the Middle East. (Show ends 16/04.)

NB: Take note to visit the Haunch's other space (the old Blains) at 23 Bruton Street.

Ends Wednesday 30 April (Tue to Fri 10am - 6pm; Sat 10am - 1pm)

@ Emily Tsingou Gallery, 10 Charles II St., SW1 (020.7839.5320) Tube: Piccadilly Circus

Humour, stories, sexual fantasies and transgression seem to preoccupy the four artists presented by the prolific Georgina Starr. Featuring performance, video, photography, painting and sculpture, the range of mediums and subjects closely parallel those employed by Starr herself. Pre-adulthood fantasy features strongly in this show, eliciting a problematic but fruitful dialogue. Freud's assertion that sexualised imagination and bodily function are increasingly repressed as we reach adulthood, seems to be a unifying theme at work here. Berlin based, Stu Mead makes paintings of an obsessive imagination. Fairytale-like scenes, stylistically reminiscent of comic and book jacket illustrations (Stu co-founded Minneapolis based, Man Bag Comics), explore a twilight world of sexualised innocence. The two DVDs presented by Meiro Koizumi exhibit self-flagellistic tendencies, enacting seemingly tragic roles and nightmarish scenarios. These are truly intoxicating performances to camera, while Natsuki Uruma's work explores vulnerability and power. The documented performances include her urinating on the carpet in the New York Chanel store and pole dancing on a tube train (thankfully London Underground didn't press charges). Rachel Lowther's shiny blue horse weighed down by it's massively outsized testicles and her spawn like sculpture of green, polyurethane balls wobbling courtesy of nestling pink vibrators, contain references to the complicity present in any sexual interplay.

NB: Show ends 30/04.

Ends Friday 9 May (Tue to Fri 10am - 6pm; Sat 10am - 1pm)

@ Anne Faggionato, 20 Dering St., W1 (020.7493.6732) Tube: Bond St./Oxford Circus

Artnet has described Detroit-born Ellen Cantor as the "foxy queen of downtown erotica", which is an easy way of describing this drawing show. The 41 year-old's themes seem at first glance that of a young teen however, on closer inspection, Barbie -- that Barbie, who features in several drawings -- Snow White and Bambi, are characters in an all-too-human series allergorical drawings. Cantor -- who also produces paintings and videos -- is a scribbler/doodler of the bored-in-school-teen genre, akin to Karen Kilimnik and Elizabeth Peyton in graphic ease, but differs from them in her more overt themes of love and sexuality. Do not be deceived by the girly touch, nor the light, wavy lines. Verging on pornographic, some are hotly erotic, while others -- because of their poor drawing -- seem flat. All of them rampage through the kind of sexuality that confronts one in day-to-day America. If these drawings were film, it would be indie-flick heaven, no doubt with Christina Ricci offering Chloe Sevigny a hand-job!

NB: Show ends 09/05.