The BFI London Film Festival enters its first weekend today.  Under new Director and Head of Exhibitions at the British Film Institute, Clare Stewart, the programme has been redrafted from previous years to make the world of new, up and coming film more open to as wide an audience as possible.  Sectioned by theme – Love, Debate, Dare, Thrill, Laugh, Cult, Journey, Sonic, Family, Shorts, Experimenta, Treasures – this year’s event has introduced new award competitions.  In addition to the already established Official Competition and Documentary awards, there are now prizes for best first feature and best newcomer.

So what’s deserved of your attention, in this most culturally active of autumns?  Top of the list must be Amour, the new film by double-Palme d’Or winner Michael Haneke.  Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts make an excellent love affair-friendship-business partnership in Rust & Bone, the latest film by A Prophet director Jacques Audiard, adapted from the short stories of Canadian writer Craig Davidson, and Bill Murray makes a laudable turn as FDR in Hyde Park on Hudson.

If you’re looking for something a bit less mainstream, a new documentary by first time Russian director Andrey Gryazev goes into the world of guerrilla art terrorists Voina (think Exit Through the Gift Shop meets Gimme Shelter).  Comedy-horror-drama-romance abounds in Korean portmanteau film Doomsday Book, exploring the end of the world with zombies, Buddhism and giant billiard ball asteroids.  Eat Sleep Die and Helter Skelter are pounding techno music dramas of girls living on the edge of the world: small town Sweden and J Pop Tokyo respectively.  Time will tell whether the BFI London Film Festival can live up to its heights of previous years, but audiences are expected to be near sell out.  Grab your tickets while you can, reviews will pour in next week…Have a good weekend…

The BFI London Film Festival runs until 21 October at various London venues.

So, you like art, huh?  That’s great – you’re just so spoiled for choice at the moment.  My list of tonight’s West End commercial gallery openings goes up to eleven, and I’m sure there are more (and even more further around town).  Eddie Peake and Prem Sahib at Southard Reid?  Yep, to do.  Fischli and Weiss at Sprüth Magers?  Of course.  Ah, here we are.  Noble & Webster at Blain|Southern.

It is the fist solo show in London by the dynamic duo since 2006.  Despite this exhibition hiatus, the new display continues Noble and Webster’s interest in material and self-portraiture.  Nihilistic Optimistic features six large-scale works that the artists describe as ‘street compositions’.  Seemingly made from pieces of discarded wood, the sculptures are chaotic and impenetrable, surrounded as they are within moats of debris: sawdust, wood shavings and tools.

The catch: When illuminated from a particular angle, the works cast shadows on the wall; shadows of portraits representing the artists, alone, together.  Okay, the conceit is nothing new, but it’s the skill, the history of the work and dexterity in execution that’s the selling point.  And this is marvellously executed work.  It’s the duality of man in action, an exploration of the self.  It’s abstraction and figuration all at once, it’s sculpture and portraiture.  The light and the dark.  A catalogue featuring contributions by Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Gustav Metzger accompanies the exhibition.

Tim Noble & Sue Webster: Nihilistic Optimistic is at Blain|Southern until 24 November.

David Bailey has achieved something of a mythic status in British artist culture.  It’s not difficult to see why.  This is a man who was born in Leytonstone and grew up as a child during the war.  He left a school that he rarely attended, joined the army, came back, picked up a camera and became a photographic assistant.  From then to now, Bailey helped to create the look of the Swinging Sixties.  He shot everyone from The Beatles to the Krays and was American Vogue’s most successful editorial photographer, prowling around acting like he owned the place.  He did, in practical terms, and he certainly wasn’t shy about it – nor anything else he’s ever done in his life.

A new exhibition at Daniel Blau celebrates a different, less well-known side to Bailey the photographer.  The blurb begins…”In ’74 I photographed the cannibals in New guinea.  They treated me OK but they didn’t make you feel relaxed…I managed to escape unscathed though, I’m pretty good at that.”  These sentences alone should tell you all you need to know about David Bailey Papua Polaroids.  Direct, filled with a dangerously reckless sense of fun and the hubristic confidence of an artist even then untouchable.

David Bailey shooting Polaroids of an indigenous peoples of Papua New Guinea – who also happen to be cannibals – is surreal in the extreme.  This exhibition is billed as the first public viewing of these pictures, which very well may be in a gallery situation.  However, to unravel and explain the mysteries, the gallery will host an ‘In conversation with…’ event between the artist and Anthony Meyer, a dealer specialising in Oceanic art.  This is undoubtedly one of the highlights of the year, and it’s happening at a private gallery in Hoxton Square.  The gallery insist that potential visitors must register an interest in advance to avoid disappointment.  It’s a message that should be heeded.

David Bailey Papua Polaroids is at Daniel Blau until 03 November.

David Bailey and Anthony Meyer in conversation takes place on 11 October.