THE Japanese Film Festival is coming to Manuka’s Capitol Cinemas, October 15 -19, with 12 titles, nine of them Australian premieres, covering everything from anime to action. The opening-night film is “Lady Maiko”, based loosely on “My Fair Lady”, with the lady a geisha, not a flower girl. Details and bookings at japanesefilmfestival.net

“NELLIE Melba: Queen of Song” is the show where soprano Louise Page dresses up to act and sing as Melba, with Phillipa Candy at the piano. It’s toured all around the country and now it’s here, as Melba would have said, for “one final appearance”, with proceeds going to Canberra Hospital’s Newborn Intensive Care Foundation. Wesley Uniting Church, 3pm, on Saturday, October 18. Tickets at the door.

OUR hard-working “CityNews” theatre critics are also practitioners. Joe Woodward has snared NIDA tutor Anna Houston to work with the Daramalan Theatre Company on development of his late-October production, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in which, Woodward says, “Shakespeare has provided us with a vehicle for cleaning the lens of our own views on contemporary gender relationships”.

Meantime, critic Len Power is about to go clean-shaven for the first time since 1975 to tread the boards as a homophobic politician in SUPA’s show, “La Cage Aux Folles”, opening on November 7.

FRENCH photographer Jean-Yves Camus’ exhibition “Landscapes. Territoires rêvés” – photos of Iceland, Switzerland and France – will be on display at Alliance Française de Canberra, 66 McCaughey Street, Turner, from October 22 to November 11. Camus is well known in France and in Europe through his exhibitions since 1990. More information at afcanberra.com.au

THE Wesley Music Foundation has Czech organist Pavel Kohout playing masterworks at Wesley Uniting Church, Forrest, 3pm, on Sunday, October 12. Double winner at the respected “Musashino – Tokyo 2000” competition, Kohout is top in the new generation of European concert organists. Bookings to trybooking.com/GAAO or tickets at the door.

THE month-long Canberra Grammar School Sculpture Festival launches on October 16 with the presentation of the $10,000 Harris Hobbs Small Sculpture Prize. According to the director, Trevor Dunbar, the campus is an ideal venue to highlight sculptures and the grounds will be open for public viewing every Saturday and Sunday until November 16.