Arts editor HELEN MUSA steps into the arts mix with another of her “Arts in the City” columns. 

CANBERRA International Film Festival returns with three days of film classics, this year exploring the work of Mitchell Leisen, the maestro of high energy ’30s Hollywood comedy, and Australian documentary director Kathryn Millard. After designing sets and costumes for Cecil B DeMille and others, Leisen emerged as a major director; the opening night features his comedy, “Remember The Night”, with Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray. Arc Cinema, National Film and Sound Archive, October 20-22.

LAST year The Hive had a hive theme and attracted 72 hexagon-shaped works of art, which created a buzz in Queanbeyan during the annual council-run arts trail. This year the theme is “Recycled in Art” and the entries in “Outside the Square #2” will be made of old, discarded objects. The exhibition runs at 274 Crawford Street, October 13-28.

JOURNALIST and author Hedley Thomas will be on stage in Canberra to take audiences behind the scenes into one of the most intriguing murder mysteries of our time. Hedley’s podcast, “The Teacher’s Pet”, captured the public’s attention as it brought to light the case of Lynette Simms, the Sydney woman who disappeared in January 1982. Guest interviewer will be Beejay Silcox. Canberra Theatre, October 12.

QUEANBEYAN Players are reviving a perennial favourite, the ground-breaking (in its time) Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, “Oklahoma”. The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, October 13-29.

A GROUP of star artists associated with Canberra Glassworks – Hannah Gason, Lisa Cahill, Cobi Cockburn, Jessica Murtagh, Nick Mount, and Vipoo Srivilasa – have been selected as finalists in the Australian Design Centre’s MAKE Award: the Biennial Prize for Innovation in Australian Craft and Design.

“SHIVER” is an immersive, illuminated installation by Michelle Day as “a culmination of abstract, foreign organisms”, a reminder of the microscopic and hidden living worlds that surround us. Belconnen Arts Centre, October 13-November 26.