From March 18 your movie experience will change utterly. Ster-Kinekor has announced that 80% of its movie houses will be turned into ”discount venues”, where seats will be unallocated and cost R14 each. In a move to revitalise cinema-going, hit by home entertainment and pricey tickets, the 30 ”Junction” movie houses will be largely located in malls used by black people.

The Jewish Board of Education this week banned gay American Rabbi Steven Greenberg from addressing students at Johannesburg’s King David High School — during the school’s ”tolerance week”. The soft-spoken Greenberg, who holds a philosophy degree, is visiting South Africa to break down anti-gay prejudice among Jews.

Thieves have relieved the Johannesburg Art Gallery of a valuable 19th-century Dutch pre-Impressionist painting — the fourth heist at the institution in the past eight years. Johann Barthold Jongkind’s A Normandy Beach was painted in 1863 and donated to the gallery by mining magnate Otto Beit.

It took about four calls before someone finally told me what Sithengi means. It was research officer Joy Lekgau, who presumed the word had Nguni roots, meaning ”market”. Uncharacteristic of the glamour the movie industry courts, Africa’s fastest growing film gathering has an ordinary name. If it were happening in the Arab world it would simply be ”Souk”. And it’s currently happening in Cape Town.

This weekend, on the third anniversary of the September 11 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, South Africans are gathering in small numbers to watch pirated copies of Michael Moore’s award winning documentary Fahrenheit 9/11. Some are also paying to watch the pirated copies. The film is to released to about 50 cinemas nationwide, ahead of the intial release date of 2005.

Spring has sprung, bringing with it a burst of energy in the cultural sector. Johannesburg celebrates the seasonal change with a series of jazz concerts. Last weekend was the sell-out Joy of Jazz in Newtown. On Sunday it is the turn of the northern suburbs and the mother of all jazz concerts — Zoo Lake’s Jazz on the Lake.

When Lindsay Bremner, professor of architecture at Wits University, set out to characterise Johannesburg’s top echelon of regeneration managers, including Neil Fraser of the Central Johannesburg Partnership and Johannesburg Development Agency CEO Graeme Reid, she had very little positive to say. But an international conference and new appointments could give Johannesburg new life.

The pay-off line of SA Fashion Week is ”The Business of Fashion”, but programme director Dion Chang believes the real business will only start when designers’ ”houses are in order”. And years of begging buyers to come to Fashion Week may start to bear dividends.

The nation’s grief has been turned into a moment of affirmation for South Africa’s lesbians and gay men. In the wake of Brenda Fassie’s death, gay community organisations have issued expressions of condolence that celebrate Fassie as a local lesbian icon. In life, she was seen as a victim of her own sexuality. Her death could just change that.