Eighties disco fetishists Chromeo are flying in for a showcase of their painstakingly assembled plastic pop, after 2007's synthy sleaze-fest "Fancy Footwork" catapulted the Quebecois duo Dave 1 (aka Dave Macklovitch, A-Trak's older brother) and best friend Pee-Thugg into the mainframe. If wobbly cringe-fest "Momma's Boy" ("And boy you got it so wrong, when you look into her eyes and all you really see is your mom") or groovy confessional "Needy Girl" don?t get you squirming second time round, the gleaming Crest-fresh title track will. The pair may be greasing up for studio album number trois -- exciting -- but bring your cheese-slicer. Speedier dance-fare comes from art director / designer / label owner / DJ / producer Trevor Jackson, and London globe-hopping DJs Punks Jump Up, the Kitsune darlings behind monster remixes spanning Peter Bjorn And John, Tronik Youth and Lykke Li They'll be joined by tinny servings from more downtempo LA space jammers Classixx in their only UK appearance this year (expect a dreamily sparse version of Yacht's "Psychic City"). If you haven't been to the warehouse venue before, Village Underground is high and wide -- plenty of space for "Bonafied Lovin'".

Russell Barr is not an advocate of caravan holidays, nor does he have a rosy view of family life. His two short plays, Lobster and Vantastic, explore the dynamics of two dysfunctional families locked in confined spaces and the relationships they develop to survive. If this sounds bleak, rest assured that Barr's wicked sense of humour and excellent comic timing make for thoroughly enjoyable viewing. Lobster is a claustrophobic story of two characters kept in a bunker, safe from a world of propaganda and lies. At least this is what Mrs Chatty tells her grandson, who has never been outside. While Tobias dreams of becoming a man, Mrs Chatty maintains power with a strange ritual of storytelling and violent games. The introduction of a new toy shifts the balance of power and a new love finally heralds Tobias' ascendancy in the bunker. Vantastic focuses on an excruciating family holiday in North Wales. Eileen Nicholas and Richard Syms are pitch perfect as a married couple disappointed with life. She fixates on their brand new caravan and the incontinent family dog, while Peter with his telling black eye is resigned to whatever life throws at him. A young boy hangs around outside desperate to become a part of this bizarre family as lover, brother, grandson. Being part of this unhappiness, it seems, is better than a life of loneliness.

NB: runs till 05/12.

Talks, as in the ones where well known or respected people speak in public about something they believe in, want to convince you of, or that they want to read from, discuss or persuade you to buy, are generally a sober affair. More often than not there's an invisible line of, hmm, shall we say reasonable assertiveness, self-control, politeness and decency, staying within the bounds of which classifies the event as a talk, rather than a hellfire and brimstone sermon where the speaker is fearlessly expounding their views. We've become rather enraptured, however, by The School Of Life's Sunday morning sermons, where contemporary social "preachers" stand up and deliver a passionate sermon with terrifying intensity. Past events have seen Tom Hodgkinson, Geoff Dyer, Alice Rawsthorn and Alain de Botton wax dogmatic about their particular beliefs -- from seduction to good design -- with no humming, no haaaring, no being polite just to avoid riling people. Coming up, Oliver James author of Affluenza, ruffles feathers with a diatribe about the seething plague of enviousness currently afflicting the nation, our morally repellent dissatisfaction with what we have, our reprehensible religion of materialism and capitalism and our pathetically constant yearning for that which we don't have. Village vicars, eat your hearts out...

Lately there's been an excited flurry of interest around the topic of outsider art, thanks to the opening of The Museum Of Everything, which displays works by untrained artists operating from the edges of society. Seraphine taps into this heightened interest in extraneous art: it tells the true story of Seraphine de Senlis, a 41-year-old French housekeeper who, in 1912, is hired to clean the property of the celebrated avant garde German art critic and collector Wilhelm Uhde. A champion of Picasso and Rousseau, among others, he has rented a house in Senlis to escape the frenzy of Paris, but soon discovers the creative genius of his stoical cleaner when accidentally presented with a wooden panel painted by the self-taught Seraphine, who in the tradition of Rousseau, has a faux-naif elegance. For some years Seraphine has been mixing her own paints (using raw materials like mud and animal blood) and, bidden by a higher power, expresses herself through art. Films about art can be tricky -- there's a reason for the saying "watching paint dry", but this film has a passionate and vigorous verve -- so much so that it scooped seven Cesars. Moving and poetic, it has a simplicity that's deeply and profoundly overwhelming. Very much worth making time for.

NB: Seraphine is released in London 27/11.

A small studio flat, with walls and boundaries-a-plenty represents the world after prison in this revival production of Clean Break's This Wide Night by playwright Chloe Moss. The audience is given a glimpse into the confusing, terrifying trial of the transition from prison to life on the outside. Lorraine and Marie are unlikely bedfellows and their friendship seems to stem only from their experience of living in a cell together. When Lorraine turns up on Marie's doorstep having just finished her 12-year sentence, Marie is reluctant to welcome in her old roommate. Having lived outside for a while since leaving prison, Marie has almost retreated completely inside herself, pushing away any human contact. Lorraine wants the old days back, where the two spent every minute of every day together, and helped each other through their time. By the end of their encounter we glimpse a sense of hope, and how just being there for someone else can help them immeasurably. With an excellent script and two very strong performances, This Wide Night becomes not a play about being good or bad, but about relationships, and what it means to be a friend.

NB: runs till 05/12.

"We are Depechists -- you know, like communist or fascist..." As the old saying goes, there's nowt as queer as folk, and fans can sometimes be the queerest of them all. Basildon's Depeche Mode were the pop supernovas of the '80s, selling millions of records and creating a legacy of subsequent influence on future bands. But to many worldwide, they also came to represent a whole lot of other things. Among this unintentional baggage the band provided, for many in Eastern Europe particularly -- Russia, Romania, the GDR -- the soundtrack to a revolution. Just as Bob Dylan is forever linked to the protest movement of '60s America, many fans came to associate Depeche Mode with freedom. Without including the band or even the original music, filmmaker Nick Abrahams and Turner Prize winning Jeremy Deller focus on the fans themselves and their rituals, reverence and homages, with an examination of the band itself filtered through the secondhand rosy mist of fan identification. Attempting to understand how the haircuts, lyrics and band line-ups could create such a quasi-spiritual effect on such widespread groups, the film is surprisingly funny and affectionate.

NB: post screening catch a Q&A with Nick Abrahams and Jeremy Deller along with a DJ set by Arthur Baker in the bar.

Director/producer Steve Jacobs turns in a nuanced and commanding mood piece adapted from the Booker Prize winning novel by JM Coetzee. Set in South Africa just after the fall of apartheid, it is a difficult and troubling story of a man's transfiguration through ordeal and his subsequent, agonising renewal. When a highly intellectual college professor specialising in Romantic poetry exercises a kind of droit de seigneur over one of his coloured students, his behaviour costs him and those involved dearly. An insouciant David Lurie, played with great finesse by John Malkovich, decides to visit his daughter Lucy, who lives as a smallholder in the Eastern Cape and is admirably played by Jessica Haines. Disgrace is beautifully filmed by Australian Steve Arnold, whose native feel for big country reveals not only the great majesty of this magnificent land, but also exposes the cloistered sense of lives lived in its remoteness. The sensitive and intricate narrative of cleverly stratified meanings invites the audience to make various interpretations, and provides an intricate allegory of South African colonisation and its aftermath. This painful and exquisitely wrought meditation on power is potently thought-provoking and provides a richly textured emotional portrait of a man, a nation and a civilisation in flux.

NB: post-screening catch a panel discussion with Boyd Tonkin, Claire Armitstead, Geoff Mulligan and Justin Cartwright. Disgrace is released in London on 04/12.

Ben Chasny's Buddhism-referencing psych-folk franchise has just released his umpteenth album, Luminous Night. The follow-up to 2007's critically lauded Shelter From The Ash -- an album whose synthesis of delicate finger-picked folk, and unconstrained flights of cosmic electric guitar, threatened to propel Six Organs Of Admittance from the clutches of New Weird America esoterica into the embraces of a mainstream rock audience -- it's another choice slab of gripping, neo-psychedelic soundscaping. Aided by members of Sunn O))), it's a luminous affair which serpentines between woodwind and prog-baroque essays bedecked with strings, introverted, mumbled folk songs and Chasny's signature over-amped guitar wig-outs -- pellucid melody and glowering dissonance held in deft balance. Always a compelling live performer whether solo, with partner Elisa Ambrogio (of Magik Markers) or with an extended band, Chasny is a modern rarity in that he attracts aficionados simply for his sinuous, explorative guitar playing -- which probably makes him his generation's answer to Richard Thompson or Tom Verlaine. Fans of both guitar grandees should form an orderly queue.

One of the most important independent record labels in recent history, Warp has spent much of the year in self-congratulatory mode as it celebrates its twentieth birthday. From the hard-as-Sheffield-steel bleep techno of its first few releases to the Artificial Intelligence era pristine electronica, through to its forays with chart friendly indie and its current hybrid status of label, film studio, production house and so much more, it's been a hell of a ride. Now, after a wonderfully deluxe box set and parties around the world, the label returns to its adopted home of London for the final Warp20 night. And quite some party too. No doubt there will be a chorus of boos from the peanut gallery at the lack of an Aphex Twin, Autechre or Boards Of Canada on the bill, but this night is more about the label as a whole, and the line-up represents the breadth and variety on board admirably. Ostensibly headlining the night are New York's Battles, a perfect choice bridging the label's more experimental electronic past with some of its more recent indie diversions, but really they are just the first among equals that include the likes of Broadcast, Flying Lotus, Plaid, Rustie, Jackson and Nightmares On Wax. With a flurry of new artists unveiled in the last few months, the label continues to grow, diversify and expand; it wouldn't be a surprise if we're back here in another 20 years raising a glass to a fine British institution.

An all-American line-up sees Kenny Larkin (aka Dark Comedy) return to the bill to air his unique branch of Detroit's so called "second wave" of techno, after his slot at Fabric's 10th birthday was cancelled due to a bout of swine flu. Having now recovered, Room Two is his first port of call where he will be pushing an original blend of sounds from his release earlier this year on Carl Craig's Planet E -- Keys, Strings, Tambourines. Upstairs in Room Three Burning Man regulars Wolf + Lamb (aka Zev Eisenberg + Gadi Mizrahi), hailing from New York, showcase their remarkably well constructed sets of long disbanded records and analogue obsessiveness (despite forming an online record label) for their debut in Fabric. Also from the East Coast Voodeux's (aka Tanner Ross + James Watts) dark productions, reminiscent of co-patriot Matthew Dear as False -- cross haunting synthesizers with deep organic sounds that hide behind a curtain of minimal techno. Their recent album The Paranormal is more unsettling than their previous efforts, pushing live techno into more sinister territory. Representing the West Coast and taking over Room One, Justin Martin joins Dirtybird label head Claude VonStroke (aka Barclay Crenshaw) to deliver foot stomping, bouncy tech house tracks that are typically much less dark than the East Coast technoistas -- closing a night that covers the cross spectrum of North American techno.

Korkalen was the firestarter of the great Swedish cinematic tradition; a film that Ingmar Bergman credited as one of the great emotional and artistic experiences of his life. Directed by and starring Bergman's mentor, Victor Sjostrom, the Barbican brings us an authentic experience of this 1921 masterpiece as part of its Silent Film & Live Music Series, with a live piano accompaniment by Stephen Horne. The story bears all the hallmarks of what we now recognise as horror: a graveyard setting, hooded figures, talk of legends, and a mystical turning point (in this case, New Year's Eve). Based on a novel by Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlof, it is a psychologically intricate moral tale of David Holm, a drunken down-and-out, who, following an accidental death, is taken on a voyage through his past by Death's coachman. All classic horrors are potentially simplistic to the hyper-stimulated 21st Century eye, but the film's even pace, careful elliptical aesthetic, and Sjostrom's unrestrained portrayal of the ruthless Holm, ensure the film remains just as eerie and chilling as ever.

It's been a watershed year for Sub Club associate Graeme Clark and his alias The Revenge. Little known outside of Dalston's Italo-edit fraternity this time last year, the Scotsman has spent 2009 steadily becoming the biggest new name in disco. Following on from his chugging edit of Stevie Wonder's "Love Light In Flight" and his dubby dancefloor bomb "The Soul Part II", Clark attracted more attention in August by providing Resident Advisor with one their best podcast mixes of 2009. Not only now a firm favourite with the disco bloggerati, The Revenge has since won over a host of heavyweight supporters ranging from Nordic house overlord Prins Thomas to Baltimore bass don Karizma. Having recently co-hosted Room 3 for Fabric's 10th Birthday party with disco royalty Daniel Wang and Bill Brewster, Clark headlines a free, all day party. In order to promote his Instruments Of Rapture label, the young Scot will be playing for no less than four hours.

Choreograph Frederic Flamand is strangely unknown to the general public. It could be to do with the intellectual level at which he works: as General Director of Ballet National De Marseille, and having staged dance performances in empty swimming pools, abandoned churches, and steel mills, Flamand positioned himself "somewhere 'between' memory and innovation" carrying "a vision that cuts across things, whether it concerns disciplines or technics." In 1996, he started reflecting on the relationship between dance and architecture, and following collaborations with Diller + Scofidio, Zaha Hadid, and Jean Nouvel, he inaugurated the Venice Biennale's first International Contemporary Dance Festival in 2003 (for which he also served as Artistic Director) with Silent Collisions, set on a 220 square metre stage designed by Morphosis founder Thom Mayne. For this inaugural John Edwards lecture, Mayne and Flamand meet again, presumably to discuss the former's interdisciplinary research and design. Mayne isn't exactly known to dumb down, either, having once said that "an architect versus a dance company is a negotiation between one's private world, one's conceptual world, the world of ideas, the world of aspirations, of inventions, with the relationship of the exterior world and all (its) limitations". Two powerful minds, then -- expect more collisions, though hardly of the silent kind.

The world isn't short of indie-pop bands, but the indulgently named The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart are possessed of a musical alchemy that sets them apart from the plaid-shirt pack. It's hard to pinpoint what makes it so easy to fall in love with this Brooklyn quartet. It may be the sheer exuberance and effortless catchiness of their songs -- which are pretty much impossible to sit still through. Or it might be the bookish boy-girl vocals of Kip Berman (whose youthful, doe-eyed tenderness resembles a less silly version of Tim Wheeler from Ash) and Peggy Wang-East, who chips in with a background of feather-light "whoo-hoo-hoos". Or perhaps it's the fact that beneath the noisy, distorted outer-layer of their music lies a core of pure sunshine. Like a coconut, their tunes are bit scuzzy on the outside, but really quite sweet on the inside. It's that kind of metaphor which may have inadvertently inspired their name, as there is a real purity at the heart of this band's music. Rest assured though, the songs performed from this year's wildly acclaimed self-titled album, and equally brilliant follow-up EP Higher Than The Stars, will be far from painful.

Transcendent sounds are in store for this mini festival curated by Australian label ROOM40. Largely instrumental in nature, each of these artists transcends the possibilities of how sound arcs and flows through the performer. Ralph Steinbruchel presents harmonically rich spacious environments, offering up sunshine on a dark night, whilst Organ Octet give a rare performance for eight reed organs, leaving the rather flamboyant Mike Cooper and his Hawaiian laptop steel guitar (and matching shirt!) with percussionist Pat Thomas to entertain with his tonal explorations. Once one of the UK's top acoustic bluesmen during the mid/late '60s, Cooper remains a restless spirit in improvisatory quarters. The following night features head honcho Lawrence English immersing listeners into a textural world of elegant solitude, in collaboration with Japanese singer Tujiko Noriko, propped up by the intricate shimmerings of Belgian's Dolphins Into The Future, wistful melodies from Tomasz Bednarczyk, and a rare screening of celebrated filmmaker Makino Takashi films. A luminous experience anticipated for all.

NB: this mini festival takes place on both 09/12 and 10/12.

The current vogue for bands curating club events a la All Tomorrows Parties is being further exemplified by Friendly Fires. Nominally a night to celebrate a successful 2009 in which the St Albans trio toured a lot, fell out at Bestival and coaxed some excellent remixes out of Aeroplane, The Thin White Duke and Wild Geese, the festivities at Elephant & Castle cinema-turned-clubbing behemoth The Coronet at least demonstrate Friendly Fires know their musical onions. Joining them live on stage are recent Mercury nominees The Invisible, who are perhaps best described as a cross between the thinking man's pop of Animal Collective and Hot Chip's dancefloor nous. Joe Goddard from the latter is amongst a smattering of highly regarded DJs to grace the decks, with Kompakt honcho Michael Mayer top of the bill. His compatriot and rising star of the techno scene Motor City Drum Ensemble, DFA's Shit Robot and London disco anatidaens Wild Geese comple a superlative line-up.

A rare collection including 300 pages of drawings by comic underground artist and illustrator Robert Crumb has brought a bit of traditional psychedelic flare to the heart of Mayfair. His bizarre surrealistic imagery laden with sex, drugs and political issues of race and irony is captivating. Crumb's drawings in particular coincide with the counter-culture mentality of the '60s and '70s, and the influence of LSD is evident. He once stated that LSD made his brain fuzzy, inspiring him to draw cartoon characters he had never seen before. There is a shift in style that's clarified in some of the later drawings, where Crumb's tone becomes subdued -- the lines are less "fuzzy" and the imagery is more or less straightforward. However, not all of the later works maintain this character. In Comics From Other Planets, completed in 1987, the characters are alien but only at second glance. Their speech bubbles are written in an alien text and are intentionally illegible, yet presented in a way that is almost understandable so that the sense of the dialogue is virtually understood. Whatever storyline Crumb follows, the actions of his characters become increasingly surreal whilst being grounded in mundane reality.

NB: runs till 12/12.

This exhibition is the equivalent of a rifle through a preparatory sketchbook or a nose round a studio -- each of the artists involved uses photography as a means of developing their preparatory ideas, and a selection of their celluloid ruminations are on show here. It's particularly interesting if you already have a vague acquaintance with the artists' work -- Cornelia Parker's contact sheets feature market stalls and shop windows cluttered with the silverware she incorporates into her final pieces (albeit usually in a more battered state), while Rachel Whiteread's images show a mind obsessed, unsurprisingly, with houses and living spaces. Tacita Dean's contribution reflects her usual painstaking engagement with the subject of her films -- in this instance the bottles and jars in Morandi's studio -- while the curator, Catherine Yass presents a series of photographic transparencies illuminated by a light box. Further work from Jeremy Deller and Richard Wentworth comparably reflects the emphasis on photography as an open-ended, exploratory medium, but perhaps the most appealing photo sketchbook belongs to Sarah Jones, whose reflective polaroids of empty studio spaces are combined with some beautifully controlled flower studies, notably the fairytale thorns of Wild Rose Blue Flower.

NB: runs till 13/12.

Werner Herzog once famously refused Klaus Kinski's enthusiastic insistence to replace the opening landscape sequence of Aguirre: Wrath Of God with Kinski's own face, his idea being that the expressive lines of his face would evoke the treacherous mountain pass followed by the cast in the film -- body becoming landscape. The Limits Of Control, a new film by cultish director Jim Jarmusch explores the still expanses of time, place and human expression with subtle persistence, and the placid face of lead man Isaach De Bankole forms its own odd topographies, which suggests Kinski's proposal was not so far fetched after all. An ambient and weirdly contemporary take on film noir, shot in the patient cadence of cult classic Dead Man or Gus Van Sant's contentious Gerry experiment (with a scattering of cameos that prove Jarmusch is still one of the most well-connected men in Hollywood), The Limits Of Control defies the conventions of the mystery thriller as we have come to understand them. No jump cuts, no fast edits, no suspenseful swells of strings -- the beauty is in the film's stillness, its muted colours and the cool complexity of the characters as they intersect occasionally for the purposes of espionage and philosophical musing.

NB: The Limits Of Control is released in London on 11/12.

On one hand Bridget Riley's work demands much and gives little, on the other it lays bare the simplest of truths -- that great painting can be understood and appreciated by consideration of two essential elements: colour and form. These new works do not deviate from Riley's career-long exploration of the linkage between these two fundamentals and their effect on observers of her work, but they do demonstrate her mastery of the medium. These paintings are both flat in surface and deep in content -- their success being the tireless movement of the viewer's eye -- never settling, and never able to read the whole, but only parts of it. The mind skips from hard line to curve, attempting to make out pattern or figuration. But the point, it seems, is to remind us of the vast possibilities of interpretation, and to evoke not understanding, but emotional response. In 1968 the artist said: "My paintings are, of course, concerned with generating visual sensations, but certainly not to the exclusion of emotion. One of my aims is that these two responses shall be experienced as one and the same." At Timothy Taylor, over 40 years later, we believe Riley is achieving her aim.

NB: runs till 19/12.

The paintings on view at Frith Street Gallery are named after Juan Usle's black pet donkey, which is a rare breed of an animal normally known for its ordinariness. Whether this is a metaphor for the paintings, or the state of painting itself, is not necessarily the point; a certain studied obliqueness, from a very particular place between process painting and more intuitive forms of abstraction, has been the substance of Usle's work for many years now. The striations of paint that form the woozily horizontal central motif in the work have been likened to Venetian blinds filtering sunlight. With Usle the hint of figural imagery is never far from the surface, but not slavishly so. An equal suggestion is that the small impasto bands of colour, which appear superimposed on the stripes, are like sections of coloured tape added to the surface of the paintings. Usle compacts time in these works; they are both quick and slow, dense and light, and sometimes the small ones seem to carry more visual density than their larger counterparts. This is a playful and contradictory exhibition -- like a black donkey in a field. See if you can catch it in the right mood.

NB: runs till 19/12.

Known more for his curating, writing and educational work, since his retirement Jon Thompson has been making a case for intelligent abstraction. This Toronto Cycle, his second show of abstractions, could be misconstrued as one of hard-edge painting or Vasarely-esque Op art, but in reality the wobbly, hard lines and loud contrasting colours are inspired by pianist Glenn Gould and really are much more of a subtle visual experience than at first appears. Can we not understand by merely looking? Just as you can be moved by sound, can a picture not provide you with another way of seeing or being in the world? Created with three colours, two for the lines and one for the base, the "absent roots" referred to in the titles come from an idea in Gould where a missing part is hinted at; in this case, a fourth colour. But this is no mere trick, painting, as always, is a vessel that carries content. It's just that this content takes time and visual attentiveness.

NB: runs till 19/12.

Duncan Campbell's new film is an ambitious project. A 50 minute film that awkwardly straddles the boundary between historic document and melodrama, Make It New John tells the story of the DeLorean Motor Company and the devastating effect of its failure on the workers in its sole plant outside Belfast. The film is a schizophrenic homage to the American promise of freedom through capitalism and the open road, and a sour proletarian lament to its fallout -- a lament whose sincerity is compromised by the fact that this part of the film is the most obviously re-enacted. Comprised largely of stock footage from the latter half of the 20th century, combined with injections of nostalgia and contemporary propositions about the period, its disenfranchised and their political affectations, Make It New John starts as a romantic run through 50 years of automotive prowess as seen through a collection of newsreels and car adverts, and descends into an overly sentimental and heavy handed re-enactment of the DeLorean plant's closure, and the projected disillusionment of a handful of workers whose lives were changed by the startling suddenness of the arrival and departure of the factory.

NB: runs till 20/12.

A collection of 47 artists selected by Ellen Gallagher, Saskia Olde Wolbers, John Stezaker and Wolfgang Tillmans make up the body of this year's installment of Bloomberg New Contemporaries. The show offers a mix of appropriated imagery and raw voyeurism through the conduit of urban sorcery. Under the bleaching light of the A Foundation's raw urban space, the emerging artists deliver a synesthetic regeneration of contemporary British art. The new contemporaries remark on material culture, tragic anatomies and unsolved images in colourful spectacle. The love child of Paul Noble and Pieter Brueghel the Elder, David Price constructs dystopian narratives etched into two dimensional reconstructions and Jorge de la Garza offers 1920s "about this" type photomontages. The artists contained within the show direct confidently the shape of things to come, returning to the material quality of their practice and the heartiness of the subject. The show is a model of curatorial proficiency and the works dance to the regeneration of young British art.

NB: runs till 20/12.

So musicals perhaps ain?t usually Kultureflash?s thing, and we would say it?s mighty difficult to find a musical that?s entertaining, not too sentimental and nice to listen too. However, we must make exception for the Young Vic?s new production of Annie Get Your Gun. First written in 1946, AGYG tells the story of wild west shootin? gal Annie Oakley, who is the best shot in the whole world. She meets Frank Butler, who thinks he?s better than her. But he?s got surprises coming. They fall in love, but their competitive relationship is troublesome and the big road to success/happiness is littered with sacrifices. Annie Oakley is played weightily by Jane Horrocks, whose tiny figure suits perfectly the unassuming character of Annie, a barely educated, pheasant-killing young woman. The ensemble brings magic with their fantastic harmonies and the support they lend to the lead roles. A bright ingenious set (note the use of conveyor belts for train and boat window scenes) accompanied by four live pianists ensures an overall treat. And not just for the kids...

NB: runs till 02/01/2010.

Known for his photography and video work, Mat Collishaw's more recent output has broadened to include multimedia, sculpture and animation. Collishaw studied at Goldsmiths alongside fellow YBA-branded peers Damien Hirst, Tracy Emin et al, and featured in the infamous mid-'90s Royal Academy Sensation show. His latest work encompasses life and death, attraction and repulsion, and also elements of fantasy and illusion. In this series of work for the Freud Museum, sculptures, projections and site-specific installations sit cosily and grotto-like in the fascinatingly detailed interiors. The exhibition's title, Hysteria, relates to the print that hangs above Freud's iconic psychoanalytical couch, depicting a neurologist showing his students a woman in a hysterical fit; the hypnotic techniques used to treat such conditions were a huge influence on young Freud. Collishaw creates ghostly projections based on these studies, as well as a zoetrope sculpture with animated figures of elves, snails and butterflies -- which are revealed to be engaged in sinister activities once the piece gets moving. These figures are juxtaposed with tree stump sculptures playing bird song recordings and incorporating record decks, with the vinyl grooves akin to tree growth rings. A mesmeric show, hinting at much darker things.

NB: runs till 03/01/10.

This sober production follows a class of friends in Poland from their schooldays in the 1920s through the trauma of the WWII and beyond. At the start, they announce their ambitions: one wants to be a film star, one a doctor and another a pilot. But soon their dreams are shattered when their identities as Catholics and Jews come to define their lives in a climate of anti-Semitism, which worsens with the invasion of the Soviets and then the Nazis. A stream of horrific events unfolds: a Jewish man is beaten to death; a Jewish woman is raped, and, holding her child, forced into a barn that is then set alight. Another seeks shelter in a disastrous marriage with a Catholic man, while a previous classmate escapes to a new life in the US. Partly based on the true story of the town of Jedwabne, whose Jewish population of 1,800 was wiped out, Bijan Sheibani's production of Ryan Craig's version of Tadeusz Slobodzianek's play has a chilling documentary feel. The excellent cast deliver their first-person accounts of the tragic events so convincingly on a courtroom-style wooden stage that members of the audience can't fail to be swept up by the pull of history. Though three hours long, it's highly recommended.

NB: runs till 12/01/10.

There are few artists who operate among such grand designs in order to display some primal human quintessence: the foundations of our civilization, whether they be building materials in the most literal sense, or our preoccupation with efficiency and destruction. Harun Farocki has been honing his critical positioning as an artist along with his filmmaking style for more than four decades, so needless to say this is a paradoxically modest retrospective of Farocki's installation work, and a monumental event spanning over 15 years. Farocki's first large-scale solo show in London Against What? Against Whom? brings together nine multi-channel works previously unseen in the UK, and poses a series of frank questions about the nature of the tools we have chosen with which to construct our common ground. Harocki's most recent work, Immersion, excavates notions of trauma and reality in the context of an already complex relationship that is prevalent in his work, setting the practical devices of documentary and artistic vision against one another. Immersion asks that we consider the role of virtual reality in the military as something that is more than mere simulation: it also questions what reparation can be made to those who survive modern warfare.

NB: runs till 07/02/2010. You can also catch 22 other films by Harun Farocki at Tate Modern (till 06/12).

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