The British Film Institute turns 75 this month, and they're throwing a big Birthday Weekender bash at their swank Southbank and IMAX locations to celebrate. Things kick off tonight with an audiovisual performance that aims to "glance into the future of cinema" and mix it with "club culture", an ominous pairing if ever we imagined one one. On Saturday and Sunday things settle into a more predictable groove, with free screenings of Mitchell and......

The Olympics have been put to bed and there's nothing but bilge on the box. Time to extract yourself from the sofa and skulk down the local uniplex to see what's shaking, where this week the delights include a pair of triple-bills - including probably the finest sequel in movie history - and some choice cuts at a free festival. Wednesday: Tonight, the Roxy continues its Beefeater London Movie Season. It's pretty simple: £3......

After a week off spent organising our copious Laserdisc collection, the Repertory Film Round-up is back to sift through the silver screen classics that London offers the discerning cineaste. Thursday: Hot-foot it to Highgate tonight for the You're Gonna Need A Bigger Boat film quiz, which this time is themed around "Blockbusters" - a subject the Rep Film Round-up confesses to being less than au fait with. Entry is two quid, and it begins......

Difficult to avoid the Bat-hype machine this week, as the release of The Dark Knight has prompted calls for a posthumous Oscar for Heath Ledger. Luckily, as always, London provides for those who don't necessarily want the latest marketing churn poured down their throat. For your consideration this week: Thursday: Wong Kar Wai's In The Mood For Love is the next film at Rivington Place, in conjunction with their Oscar Munoz retrospective. After his......

Can't decide on whether to take an umbrella or a sombrero out in this ever-changeable climate? The answer's both, unfortunately, so we recommend that instead of facing the elements you bed down in a hushed auditorium, where this week's selection includes a season of films from an island where the sunshine is just that little bit more reliable. Thursday As part of their retrospective of Oscar Munoz, which we reviewed last month, Rivington Place......

Back before there was Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, or Meg Ryan and virtually any other male lead, there was Kate Hepburn and Cary Grant, Kate Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, Kate Hepburn and – well, you get the idea. Never seen the inimitable Ms Hepburn on the silver screen before? Now’s your chance: she and a host of other sharp, witty, irrepressible, and, of course, gorgeous comedic heroines will......

Swanning About Not one, but two Swan Lakes swim into town this week. Take your pick from The Russian State Ballet of Siberia's version at the New Wimbledon Theatre, or the Moscow City Ballet at The Hackney Empire. Expect world-class dance interpretations this classic love story to Tchaikovsky's sublime score at both. Topsy-turvy Theatreland Liverpool comes to Hampstead (in 3 Sisters on Hope Street), Hollywood hits Stratford (Marylin and Ella), and an Asian Tempest......

If you like your art noisy, unconventional, mixed up with lots of other stuff, and against a whacky backdrop, and your music electronic and unpredictable, then this is one for you. Noise of Art is an umbrella label for a group of talented musicians under the loose leadership of founder Ben Osbourne. This performance (to celebrate the release of a new album, Picadilly Nite Version #1, this spring) sees them teamed up with the BFI......

We mentioned the Watch This Space festival at the National Theatre just before it started but wasn't as enthusiastic as we were last year when the summer weather was hot enough to require dispensers full of free sunscreen. With all the rain and thick grey cloud that heralded the opening of this annual outdoor performance festival, we anticipated distribution of free umbrellas and cancelled performances... But look! At the time of writing, it isn't......

This Day In London’s History 1937: A Japanese aircraft lands at Croydon Airport, setting a world record for the fastest flight from Tokyo to London. In the 1930s there had been considerable interest in establishing records for long distance flights, and a prize had been offered for the first flight between Paris and Tokyo to take less than 100 hours. However nobody had yet won this prize, despite many attempts, including one that failed......

Don't say we never give you anything interesting to do on a weekend: how about two new exhibitions at a very special museum in a trendy part of London? We've been very excited about science-technology-art crossovers this year, we've seen some extraordinary things that are just the start of a golden era of completely new and wonderful things - we hope. And Kinetica is exactly the sort of place to keep pushing things forward......

Brooklyn-based artistic collaborators Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, who also happen to be married to one another are making their London debut as part of tomorrow's opening of BFI South Bank. We've been all over the internet looking up this couple's work in anticipation of finally being able to see this new arts space and we can't think of anything better as the first exhibition in the gallery space. They love films. They love cinema.......

Still a week away from the unveiling of the new BFI Southbank complex the press have been given a glimpse of what to expect of the NFT's replacement: In addition to the existing three cinemas, the venue will include the Mediatheque, offering free access to over 300 film and TV titles from the BFI archive. The "digital jukebox" contains clips from the last 100 years, including feature length films such as Brief Encounter and......