FESTIVAL: The Bent Festival is coming to town this weekend! The annual art and music festival celebrates DIY electronics, hardware hacking, and circuit bending. "Each year we invite artists from across the country and around the globe to perform music with their home-made or circuit bent instruments, teach workshops to adults and children alike, create beautiful art installations and to generally come together, face to face, and showcase the state of the art in DIY electronics and circuit bending culture." Schedule here.

All Weekend // Various times // DCTV [87 Lafayette St] // $25 festival pass

TALK: Apple & Indiewire are presenting a series of Filmmaker Talks at the Soho Apple Store, and tonight, brooding Academy Award-nominated actor Clive Owen (Inside Man, Closer, Children of Men) will be discussing his upcoming films (like The International with Naomi Watts and Duplicity with Julia Roberts) and taking audience questions. Swoon. Tomorrow catch Amy Poehler in the same place.

Friday // 6:30 p.m. // Apple Store, Soho [103 Prince St, at Greene] // Free

FILM: The Found Footage Festival is in town this weekend, the event "compiles more than an hour's worth of footage from videos that were found at garage sales and thrift stores and in warehouses and dumpsters throughout the country. Curators Pickett and Prueher host each screening in-person and provide their unique observations and commentary on these found video obscurities." Watch the trailer here, and try to guess which clip David Cross donated!

Friday and Saturday // 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. // Anthology Film Archives [32 2nd Ave] // $10

GARDENING: The NYC Department of Parks & Recreation gets their hands dirty with the National Gardening Association this weekend, as they host the NYC GROWS Garden Festival. There will be a wide variety of activities, including practical garden demonstrations. Get more details, and the full schedule, here.

Saturday // 11 a.m. // Union Square (Broadway and 4th Ave] // Free

EVENT: Get ready to flash those peace signs; this weekend over 100 community organizations come together to spread peace through music, art, poetry, dance, film, spoken word, and hip hop. The Brooklyn Peace Fair will provide discussions, workshops, and performances throughout the day, including some tunes by Dragons of Zynth.

Saturday // 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. // Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus [Flatbush and Dekalb] // Free

THEATER: Feverishly ambitious director Jeff Lewonczyk has enlisted a cast of thousands for his latest visionary production, Babylon Babylon. Well, not thousands, but when thirty actors turn the intimate Brick Theater into the Babylonian Temple of Ishtar circa 539 B.C., it sure feels like thousands. The action takes place on the eve of the Persian invasion, as their decadent party is about to become fodder for some killer reggae songs. "A tapestry of intertwining narratives winds its way through the temple: untrustworthy historians, gyrating priestesses, doomsday prophets, grasping plutocrats, undercover lovers, displaced Jews, seekers of bloody vengeance—all of these, and many more, meet beneath the erotic, leveling stare of Ishtar." Martin Denton calls it "an extraordinary effort... marries a story-telling spirit and ethos worthy of the Arabian Nights to a cautionary tragedy such as a Greek poet (say, Aeschylus) might have fashioned. Lewonczyk scores big!" – John Del Signore

Saturday // 3 p.m. & 8 p.m. // The Brick Theater [575 Metropolitan Avenue, Williamsburg] // Tickets cost $15.

FILM For a break from Hollywood fare, there's the new French suspense film, Roman de Gare, from director Claude Lelouch (his 1966 film, A Man and a Woman, won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film). Three lives of three people--successful novelist, a troubled single mother, and a man who may either be the novelist's ghost writer, a child predator or a man who has abandoned his family--cross with many delicious twists and turns.

Starts this weekend // Lincoln Plaza Cinemas & Angelika Film Center // Multiple showtimes, movie ticket fees

MUSIC: It's been a while since we've seen Ford & Fitzroy take the stage, so word of their show this weekend is a welcome one. They take the stage at Trash along with Murder Your Darlings, The Clay Pigeons, Junior & Sons and Playing Dead. Cheap beer, lots of bands...what more could you ask for?

Saturday // 8 p.m. // Trash Bar [256 Grand St, Williamsburg] // $7

PARKS EVENT: The Parks Department wants you to not only fly a kite but learn how to make one, too. The Sixth Annual Kite-Making workshop with the Noguchi Museum will be held at Socrates Sculpture Park, and participants will learn how to transform a plastic bag in beautiful, recycled kite and try them out at the park.

Sunday // 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. // Socrates Sculpture Park [Broadway at Vernon Boulevard in Queens] // Free (but space is limited)

The listed events were chosen by Gothamist and brought to you by the 2009 Toyota Corolla.