Film festival picks of the week

Northern Lights Film Festival, Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead & Durham This north-eastern fixture celebrates those films and film-makers who, by accident or design, walk a different path. Films like Todd Solondz's excellent Life During Wartime, a sequel to Happiness that makes a virtue of recasting the roles from the original, or Tommy Wiseau's The Room, a film that stands apart due to its unflinching and entertaining awfulness. Or Kick-Ass which is that most unexpected beast: a film directed by Matthew Vaughn that is really, really good. There are also workshops on creating a movie fanzine or using social networking sites for smart promotion, and some interesting uses of local talent, with Maxïmo Park providing a live soundtrack to the 1928 chiller The Man Who Laughs and plain-speaking local woman Maureen selecting which new short films are shown. Various venues, Sat to 28 Mar, visit nlff.co.uk Phelim O'Neill Abandon Normal Devices, Cumbria & Lancashire Sure, we've got clean floors, leg room and allocated seating, but once in a while, don't you just long to swap the sanitised cinematic experience for something a bit more challenging? A festival of "new cinema and digital culture", which boldly blends creativity with technology. You can visit an inflatable PVC cinema and choose your film via touchscreen, watch Rambo transformed into a digital card game, see a fake moon over Preston, then treat yourself to some strawberry-flavoured cloud from the roving "nano ice-cream" van. Various venues, Mon to 10 Apr, visit andfestival.org.uk Andrea Hubert Flatpack Festival, Birmingham Mixing film, music and performance, this eclectic festival elicits intriguing collaborations from those working at the fringes. The opening event that sees scratchy jazz-punks Jackdaw With Crowbar play alongside Zappa-inspired 10-piece Moon Unit and the audience toying with Plasticine. On the film front, among others, Super Furry Animals' Gruff Rhys delves into his heritage with a road movie, Murnau's Sunrise gets a jazz score, there's a tour of classic Odeon cinemas, a night of animation and music by Synth Eastwood, and Belbury Youth Club brings together a spooky collection of films, with 1974 Alan Clarke-directed TV play Penda's Fen the highlight. Various venues, Tue to 28 Mar, visit flatpackfestival.org Iain Aitch Willie Doherty – Ghost Stories, Belfast Doherty's unsettling art is, by its socio-political nature and by his own admission, heavily influenced by his witnessing of 1972's Bloody Sunday massacre. To celebrate the permanent installation of his best-known work, Ghost Story (a video piece narrated by Stephen Rea), at the Ulster Museum, Doherty has selected a season of exceptional films connected by themes of paranoia, surveillance and psychological responses to trauma – subjects entirely relevant to the location. Choose from Red Road, Andrea Arnold's powerful examination of CCTV, Michael Powell's voyeur horror Peeping Tom, Cronenberg's fetishistic Crash, conspiracy thriller The Parallax View, Godard's Alphaville and more. Queens Film Theatre, Fri to 1 Apr Andrea Hubert