Arts editor HELEN MUSA leads this week’s Arts in the City column with news of the Japanese Film Festival Online’s month of free movies. 

The Japanese Film Festival Online returns for its third edition. This year’s program features 23 films and two TV dramas, as well as four new Japanese horror shorts. Highlights are Father of the Milky Way Railroad, a biopic detailing the life of Japanese poet and novelist Kenji Miyazawa and BL Metamorphosis, in which a highschool girl and an elderly lady bond through their shared love of manga. Streamed free with subtitles in up to 16 languages at watch.jff.jpf.go.jp from June 5 to July 3.

The National Gallery is staging the first Australian exhibition dedicated to Anni and Josef Albers, leaders in the Bauhaus art movement. Known as a European art world power couple, the Alberses were at the forefront of artistic innovation through weaving, painting and printmaking. June 8-September 22.

Geoff Page’s new poetry book, Penultima, will have us looking towards its successor. With 25 collections published over the last 50 years, his mighty influence on Australian poetry cannot be denied. Beyond writing, Page is also notable for his support of the arts through his regular sessions at Smiths Alternative – Geoff’s Poetry at Smiths and Geoff’s Jazz at Smiths. The book is available at pittstreetpoetry.com

The Friends of the National Library will present two of Australia’s top crime writers discussing The Craft of Crime with CityNews crime fiction reviewer Anna Creer. Sulari Gentill is the author of the Rowland Sinclair Mysteries, while former journo Chris Hammer has made himself the king of rural noir. NLA, June 5.

The development application for a major upgrade to Gorman Arts Centre has recently been submitted. Gorman turns 100 this year and is occupied by some of the ACT’s leading arts organisations, smaller arts groups, arts businesses and individual artists, so it is pleasing to learn that residents are being properly consulted.

Arts National, the former ADFAS, will have calligraphic artist Gemma Black to talk about the Book of Kells, which is kept today at Trinity College in Dublin. Regarded as the most elaborately illustrated manuscript of its type, it is considered a wonder that it has survived the centuries. National Library, June 3.

News all day, every day at CityNewsQBN.com.au.