What films like Todd Hayne's Safe (Thur) and Art for Teachers of Children (Wed) demonstrate is the breadth of work that is Not-Hollywood. The disparate subjects and styles that comprise Mavericks in Manchester prove that "independent film" is a slippery term, describing a sensibility rather than a particular product. Upstanding members of this unorthodox community include beat generation jazz junkies killing time in The Connection (Sun) and compromised Nineties gangsters discovering Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (tonight). The festival, which starts today, displays the innovative underbelly of American film, offering a parallel universe to the studio-generated world of Forrest Gump. Strange though it may seem, there are some film lovers who won't be visiting cinemas this weekend to enjoy the new print of The Sound of Music. Instead, these black-clad misfits will be joining others of their kind at the Festival of American Independent Cinema in Manchester, dosing up on transatlantic alienation and radical documentary.
The two explain each other: after all, what's the point of understanding holes if you don't know how many of them it takes to fill the Albert Hall? 22 Nov 7.30pm, RAH, London SW7 (0171-589 8212) returns pounds 12. There Hawking will sit - glasses, mop hair, wheelchair - the very image of rational inquiry alone at the centre of the cosmic architecture. "There's musicians, retired sergeant majors, and, erm, a coach party from British Nuclear Fuels," she says. "I do find myself wondering why they're all coming." The explanation must be that unknown quantity, RAH. Even Honor Wilson-Fletcher, the event's organiser for Waterstone's, confesses to surprise at the audience make-up. Yet his billing with JP McEvoy, the author of Stephen Hawking for Beginners, says a fair bit about the limits of his popularising powers.
Granted, Hawking's book on modern cosmology, A Brief History of Time, is one of the best-selling books of the century, but how many non-scientists understand it? The man is famed not only for his theories about black holes, but also for making these matters easy to grasp. You can't help thinking that if he were appearing in a Cambridge bookshop, only 3.6 people would turn up. He is about as close to M People in terms of easy listening as we are from the edge of the galaxy, yet the event has already sold out. One can be found in Wednesday's booking, a gig/lecture by the legendary theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking called "Does God Throw Dice in Black Holes?". Or is it, perhaps, knowledge of the universal law of audience attraction? The law that states that the very fact of appearing at the RAH self-fulfillingly determines a larger- than-merited crowd or, to put it as an equation: Mpeople - RAH = 0people; Mpeople + RAH = lotsofpeople We need a scientific proof. It is one of the unsolved riddles of existence: why really rather ordinary pop stars dare to perform at London's Royal Albert Hall. Take next week, for instance: what confidence in their broad appeal M People must possess to take on the 10,000-seater venue.
