Protoclip Palmares near Paris
Protoclip Festival trophy designed by Paris select shop The Lazy Dog. Last year they created a figure with a VHS cassette as a head (see photo in our Escapades section).
Saturday night at the 4th Annual Protoclip, independent music video festival, the Jury announced the Palmares or awards for best music videos. The event took place in Sèvres, a southwestern suburb of Paris, France. This year’s festival had a special focus on Japan, with a program of Japanese music videos, a sushi-making workshop and a special screening of Tokyo!, three stories of life in the city told by directors Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Bong Joon-ho.
This is the second time I have visited the festival to present a special Flux program of my favorite music videos of the past year. A few of my picks: Encyclopedia Pictura’s Bjork video Wanderlust, Chris Milk’s Gnarls Barkley video Who’s Gonna Save My Soul and Syd Garon and Sage Vaughn’s Way Down for NASA were particularly popular with the audience.
The festival was founded in 2003 through the passion of audio-visual students Ophélie Beaurepaire, Grégoire Saget and Laurianne Martini. The mission of the festival is clear, to celebrate independent music video creation particularly conceptual clips with a distinct spotlight on French music videos that have never been broadcast. Which makes it very different than Festival du Clip, a posh music video festival held in Provence with more industry ties.
While Mirrorball, RESFEST and onedotzero have had a spotlight on conceptual music videos since the late-90’s and the video festival in Oulu, Finland founded in 1994 is arguably the longest running video festival, France is blessed to have two festivals that celebrate clips in unique ways.
Through the connections of Festival Artistic director, Pascal Forneri, the festival has also cast a spotlight on the origins of music video with the presentation of Scopitones. The Scopitone was a sort of “Film Jukebox” developed in France in the early 1960’s. It was fun to see these sometimes suggestive, sometimes kitsch, often hilarious music films projected on the cinema screen.
The festival’s primary programs of French music videos were a juried competition program of independent clips and the “professional” program (commissioned videos that have been broadcast). France continues to be an animation powerhouse and my favorite video from the independent program was Driving This Road Until Death Sets You Free, an awesome stop-motion animated clip inspired by John Carpenter’s The Thing, but created using GI Joe figures. The video, directed by Xavier Ehretsmann and Simon Gesrel, won two awards at the festival.
2008 Protoclip Award Winners
(videos can be viewed on Protoclip’s website)
Grand Prix
Tableau de Chasse
director: Patrick Volve
music: Claire Diterzi
Coup de coeur du jury
Room to the Beat
director: Bob Blunden
music: The Cedar
Prix de l’Animation
Indigo Moon
director: Cyprien Nozières
music: Alien Robots Orchestra
Prix de la qualité technique et Clip coeur (Public)
Driving This Road Until Death Sets You Free
director: Xavier Ehretsmann / Simon Gesrel
music: Zombie Zombie
Clip d’or (Public) - Professional
Stress
director: Romain Gavras
music: Justice
Prix des Internautes (Public prize as voted on the web)
Lali
director: Damien Maestraggi / Naël Marandin
music: Exsonvaldes
Festival co-founder Laurianne Martini and Festival Producer Jean-Fabrice Barnault as they introduce the Jury to give the awards.
The 2008 Protoclip Jury included actor/composer Alex Beaupain, animator Stéphane Berla (he directed the amazing Tais Toi Mon Coeur music video, actress and former Miss Tahiti, then Miss France, Mareva Galanter and Guillaume Le Goff, editor in chief of Clark Magazine.
