There are all manner of cool cultural outings transpiring across the country. Let's take a three-day sweep. First stop, Japanese culture invades Canada:

The Design Exchange & The Japan Foundation are presenting Masahiro Shinoda's 1995 film Sharaku. The screening is part of two month festival entitled Sharaku Interpreted By Japan's Contemporary Artists. But before we talk about the movie, who is Sharaku?

"Sharaku was a genius ukiyo-e woodblock artist from the Edo period in Japan. However, to this day historians are unable to find conclusive proof as to the true identity of this phenomenal artist. From May 1794 to February 1795, a mere ten months, this extraordinarily influential artist, produced over 140 prints, the majority of which were portraits of actors from the kabuki theatre, and then mysteriously vanished."

This exhibit is a 21st century return to Sharaku.

Today's graphic designers and artists were challenged to confront the original artist "two hundred years after his time. The primary premise of this exhibition is to introduce and compare these various works by the participating artists faced with the common theme of Sharaku. At the same time, we also hope that this will provide an opportunity to illustrate the connections between ukiyo-e and the graphic design of Japan, and the differences between the approaches used in graphic design and contemporary art."

The film follows the life of Sharaku, asking the obvious questions: Why did the artist have such a short career? Why was his identity kept a secret? And why and where did he vanish?

"Masahiro Shinoda, the director of Double Suicide (1969), recreates the luxurious urban life of 18th-century Tokyo, where the population of one million jostled in Kabuki theatres, the red-light district, markets and boats decorated with lanterns. As Sharaku prints colourfully emerge from the glittering dark of the black-mica-powdered background, the enigma of the artist unfolds on the screen."