This week's new film events

Family Friendly Film Festival, Manchester Summer holiday's sorted for Manchester parents for the next fortnight. And you don't even need to feel guilty about plonking the kids in front of a screen with some popcorn. There are previews, like the Nic Cage-starring Sorcerer's Apprentice, and free outdoor screenings at Spinningfields (Up, Spirited Away, Jurassic Park, Madagascar), but more brain-fuelling and calorie-burning are the themed days and tie-ins with local museums. See films like Fantastic Mr Fox and The Princess And The Frog in fancy dress (the kids, not the parents); take in aquatic movies like Ponyo or The Little Mermaid, plus themed activities, at the Bolton Aquarium; have an arty Mad Hatter's tea party at the Whitworth Art Gallery … you get the picture. And you get the parental brownie points. Various venues, Fri to 15 Aug, visit familyfriendlyfilmfestival.org.uk Film4 Summer Screen, London It's a joy to watch any movie within the neoclassical embrace of Somerset House's courtyard, even when it's raining, but this year's great programme is a bonus. No Mamma sodding Mia! or Dirty frickin' Dancing here. Instead we get films you'd gladly (re)watch like Mulholland Drive, Black Narcissus, Manhattan, and Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World, plus some enticing double bills (Kill Bill Vol 1 and Enter The Dragon; Let The Right On In and The Lost Boys). Better still, they're supplemented by (indoor) discussion events. Jesse (The Thick Of It) Armstrong and friends discuss satire before the Supermarionated genuis of Team America (pictured), and Christiane Kubrick remembers her husband Stanley before his wrenching first world war movie Paths Of Glory. Get there early and have a picnic. But book early; these will sell out fast. Somerset House, WC2, Thu to 8 Aug; somersethouse.org.uk North By North East, Newcastle upon Tyne For those who haven't yet experienced the BFI's great Mediatheques, they're like a free YouTube jukebox, except with fewer comedy cats and more priceless archive material from British history, most of which you'd never see anywhere else. Following Mediatheques in London, Cambridge and Wrexham, another one has just opened at Newcastle's Discovery Museum. If you don't know where to start, the BFI has assembled a dedicated collection of over 100 northeasterward-looking choices. There's everything from Edwardian football matches to footage of suffragette protests and the building of the New Tyne Bridge, Beatlemania Tyne-Tees-style, and locally sourced entertainment like Mike Figgis's Stormy Monday, Our Friends In The North, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet and Billy The Fish. Discovery Museum, visit twmuseums.org.uk/discovery A Celebration Of Gainsbourg, London The fact that there's a new biopic of Serge Gainsbourg and it's not rubbish is celebration enough, but for 60s Francophiles who can't get enough of his filthy French genius, here's a rare chance to see the once-banned 1976 film of Je T'Aime … Moi Non Plus. Written and directed by Gainsbourg, it makes the song look like a children's lullaby, with anally fixated gay trucker Joe Dallesandro lusting after the androgynous posterior of waitress Jane Birkin (to a great soundtrack, of course). No luck tracking down Gainsbourg's similarly arse-fixated 1986 film Charlotte For Ever, starring himself and 15-year-old daughter Charlotte, but we will at least get a live performance of Charlotte's solo album of the same name from a mysterious collective known as Hige Club. Perhaps they'll play the Gainsbourgs' even wronger father-daughter electropop duet, Lemon Incest. If not, video highlights of his musical career will have to do. Curzon Soho, W1, Fri