Photos by Jonathan Wells Stéphane Berla accepts award for his Matthieu Chedid video

French actor/comedian and Protoclip Awards MC, Nicolas Ullman donned a kilt and a pair of Doc Martens in honor of this year’s festival focus on the UK. Last night’s spirited awards for the 5th Annual Protoclip music video festival took place at centre musical Barbara Fleury Goutte d’Or in Paris.

After a few years in Sèvres (a suburb of Paris, literally one subway stop out of the city, but one subway stop too far), the fledging festival relocated to “La Ville-Lumière” (The City of Light). With a record number of submissions and its strongest program yet the festival is set to become more widely known as a key showcase for independently produced music videos (and a showcase of the art of music video in general).

If the helmet fits, wear it - Filmmaker and Protoclip Jury member Dougal Wilson outside the festival venue

This year’s Jury included celebrated French music artist Arthur H (Jury Chair), artistic director Aurélie Ullrich, music video producer Hélène Segol (Wanda), artist/filmmaker Alexandre Castagnetti, artistic director Nicolas Gautier, Thierry Caron secretary general of SPPAM, an association of top French music video production companies and last but not least British music video director Dougal Wilson.

As an ongoing partner of Protoclip, Flux curated two programs for this year’s festival:
- “Made in the UK,” which included among others works from Nez, Chris Cairns, Shynola, Julia Pott, McBess and Simon, Russell Weekes, Andy Martin, David Wilson and Nima Nourizadeh.
- Flux Selects, a round up of some of our favorite work this year that included Patrick Daughters, Keith Schofield, Sean Pecknold, Andreas Nilsson, Stefan Nadelman, Esteban Diácono, Alma Har’el among others.

With the support of SPPAM, the French music video production association, this year Protoclip included showcases of top French music video producers Partizan and Wanda, round table discussions about the music video industry, as well as workshops for young directors on Stop Motion animation and the RED Camera.

Host Nicolas Ullman all kilted out

Each year the festival creates unique trophies that speak to that year’s theme (previous year’s awards have ranged from VHS tape sculptures to custom Dunny-like characters). For this year’s UK Focus, specially painted Doc Marten shoes were designed (mounted on bricks for the added heft). Before knowing the award was mounted on a brick, I offered to bring the trophy of Alexei Tylevich (who couldn’t be in Paris for the festival) with me to LA in my carry on luggage (I hope security doesn’t consider it a weapon).

Protoclip 2009 trophy (mounted on a brick) won by Logan’s Alexei Tylevich.

Throughout the awards ceremony each award was presented by a special guest (French musicians and singers unknown to the author) after which the winning clip screened in full.

Immediately following the last award the host gathered all the guest presenters and Jury Chairman and singer Arthur H in a cover (in english) of the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen.” While in honor of this year’s special focus, it was to say the least bizarre (bordering on unintended parody), especially after just seeing such cutting edge music + video.

All of the music videos selected for this year’s Protoclip can be viewed on the festival web site of course.

Special thanks to the whole Protoclip team!

Also tip of the hat to French site Arbobo for pulling embeddable links to the winning video clips, you can find their review of the awards en Français on their site)

On to the winning videos:

Grand Prize
Dans l’herbe
director: Olivier Martin
music: Ignatus

Coup de coeur du jury (Jury Prize)
Beware, the killer!
director: Jesùs Hernandez
music: Mondrian

Prix de l’Animation (Best Animation)
Chewing Homme
director: Olivier Gondry
music: Hermentaire

Prix de la qualité technique (Best Technical Skills)
A Volta
director: Alexei Tylevich (Logan)
music: N.A.S.A.

Coup de coeur du public - réservé à un clip indépendant (Audience Prize - Independent)
A Mighty Leviathan Of Old
director: Pierre Dejon
music: Vandaveer

Clip d’or du public - réservé à un clip professionnel (Audience Prize - Professional)
Est-ce que c’est ça
director: Stéphane Berla
music: Matthieu Chedid

Prix des Internautes (Public prize as voted on the web)
Danger Global Warming
director: Alexandre Athane
music: The Blacksmoke Organisation (recycled by Utah Saints)