BUG

The evolution of music video

BUG 07, Thursday 22nd May 2008, 8:45pm, BFI Southbank

Download these notes as a PDF document, as distributed at the event

Welcome to BUG. We have been bringing the very best music videos from all over the world to the big screen at NFT1 for over a year now. Tonight you will see some more.

And BUG 07 is also very special because tonight's show is just the first half of BUG 07. There is a second, somewhat different presentation of BUG at the BFI Southbank next week. Dougal Wilson, who is tonight's special guest, will present BUG 07: The Director's Cut next Tuesday, introducing his favourite and most inspirational music videos – and talking to his own very special surprise guest. But tonight Dougal is the guest of our regular, brilliant host Adam Buxton.

We start tonight's show with something very much in the spirit of BUG's subtitle – The Evolution of Music Video. It's not an official video, but essentially a homemade viral by a fan of the Los Angeles-based lounge outfit The Bird And The Bee – and also the products of Apple. Created by Dennis Liu, a recent NYU film graduate and now working as an ad agency producer in New York, 'Again And Again; is an astute deconstruction of the modern-day creation and distribution process, and it is proving to be a runaway viral hit.

We follow this culturally significant video with some social commentary. To say it's visually arresting is a mild understatement. Food For Animals is an experimental hip-hop artist from Maryland, USA who has teamed up with Martin Sulzer from the German animation outfit Landjugend to create a film about greed – and an unashamed anti-hero who lets it all hang out in his mission to consume.

Next comes Ace Norton's new video for Sebastien Tellier, and a reunion of the French dance-pop maestro with the prolific young Californian director. Ace's entertaining video offers a little conundrum – can you spot the real Seb? – and its BUG screening is hugely timely as, somewhat bizarrely, Tellier is representing France in the Eurovision Song Contest this Saturday.

After our first break, we return with a video for Swedish electronica act Slagsmålsklubben – the Scandinavian Kraftwerk, with added yodelling – by prolific Swedish artist/director Andreas Nilsson. This is one of his more lighthearted efforts: a satire on sexy dance videos (you know the one) that digresses into a carry-on of suggested smut – all in appropriately crude cartoon form.

That is followed by something more polished, although by no means slick. The new R.E.M. album actually delivers on an often-promised, much-delayed return to form. But if 'Hollow Man' could come from the Eighties, the video by Gary Thomas and Stefan Woronko of Toronto design/direction house Crush is very much about the digital Noughties, and the confusion of the modern world. R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, regularly a generous patron of talented filmmakers, approached Crush after seeing their viral work last year for Douglas Coupland's novel 'The Gum Thief'. The result is an almostelegiac visual bombardment.

And then comes Sia, and her latest collaboration with fellow Australian Kris Moyes. Following on from Moyes' video for Sia's 'Buttons' last year, dedicated to interesting rearrangements of her face, here is another video about image manipulation. This time the singer inhabits a dozen different characters, each one larger than life. It's a great, multi-dimensional, performance.

We then welcome, our special guest this evening. Dougal Wilson is one of the best music video directors the UK has ever produced, and having directed so many ingenious and extremely entertaining videos for The Streets, Will Young, Dizzee Rascal, Bat For Lashes and many more, selecting just a few to show tonight has been difficult. But we start with a rarity: one of Dougal's very first videos for the unknown band Mydas. It's raw and very low budget, but certainly the fertile creativity is all in evidence.

Then comes his new video for Goldfrapp's 'Happiness'. It is based on a sequence from an obscure Fifties musical – and stirred up some extraordinary reactions on the video blogs. But most importantly, once again it exhibits Dougal's classic qualities: it's teeming with ideas and brilliantly entertaining.

Then we have selected a video by Dougal which has probably had less exposure than most: his video for Jarvis Cocker's 'Don't Let Him Waste Your Time', when he transforms Jarvis into a highly dangerous, yet somehow utterly convincing, London cab driver.

That is followed by the new Interpol video, a largely abstract piece by LA-based outfit Blip Boutique – that's James Frost and Mary Fagot – who collaborated with artist Aaron Koblin, who uses data mapping technology more regularly used by the Federal Aviation Authority to make his art.

Next comes a brilliant new video for Sonny J's Handsfree by Eran Creevy, who is building a big reputation for his hugely popular videos for the likes of Utah Saints and Alex Gaudino. This is his best yet: an irresistible combination of 'Heroes' and 'Thriller' that shows some good old-fashioned music video production quality – the video, which greatly benefits from its studio set feel, was shot at the George Lucas stage at Elstree.

Then we have our second Landjugend video of the evening, and another work for eclectic German label Cock Rock Disco. Florian Böck and Markus Feder have directed this bizarre story of the relationship between a lonely man and a bird for Terminal 11's 'The Bird's Midair Heatstroke' which, say its makers, is inspired by various creation myths from different times and cultural origins.

And that's followed by an extraordinary low-budget video by Alex Smith – who coincidentally, used to direct in partnership with James Frost, now of Blip Boutique. Alex's career is dotted with gems, to which we can now add this for Warp's post-rock outfit Pivot. It's a low-budget, very gory, ocean-set horror, all shot on stills, in a studio with dolls. And it's fantastic.

After all that blood and gore it's only right that we should end the evening with some love and peace – and rollerskating. We have the brand new video for Flight of the Conchords' 'Ladies Of The World' by Nima Nourizadeh, which catches the essence of their brilliant TV show and takes it to a new dimension (in the 1970s).

But we finish, not with a conventional music video, but a short film that is essentially a video for another kind of recording. 'I Met the Walrus' is Josh Rakin's Oscar-nominated animated visualisation of an interview that John Lennon conducted with 14-year old Jerry Levitan in 1969. It was a different world then, but the sentiments ring out as important as ever.

David Knight

Artist	Title	Direction	Production company	Record company	Nationality	Length
BUG	Title sequence megamix	Model Robot	Model Robot		United Kingdom
The Bird And The Bee	Again And Again	Dennis Lau		Blue Note	USA
Food For Animals	'Tween My Lips	Martin Sulzer	Landjugend	Hoss, Cock Rock Disco	USA/Germany
Sebastien Tellier	Divine	Ace Norton	Partizan	Record Makers, Lucky Number Music	USA/France
Slagsmålsklubben	Malmo Beach Night Party	Andreas Nilsson		EMI Sweden	Sweden
R.E.M.	Hollow Man	Gary Thomas & Stefan Woronko	Crush, Toronto	Warner Bros	Canada/USA
Sia	The Girl You Lost To Cocaine	Kris Moyes	The Directors Bureau	Monkey Puzzle	USA
Mydas	Let Me In	Dougal Wilson			United Kingdom
Goldfrapp	Happiness	Dougal Wilson	Colonel Blimp	Mute	United Kingdom
Jarvis Cocker	Don't Let Him Waste Your Time	Dougal Wilson	Colonel Blimp	Rough Trade	United Kingdom
Interpol	Rest My Chemistry	Blip Boutique	Blip Boutique	Captiol	USA
Sonny J	Handsfree	Eran Creevy	Between The Eyes	Stateside/EMI	United Kingdom
Terminal 11	The Bird's Midair Heatstroke	Landjugend		Matador	United Kingdom
Pivot	In The Blood	Alex Smith	Black Dog Films	Warp	United Kingdom
Flight Of The Conchords	Ladies Of The World	Encyclopedia Pictura	Ghost Robot	One Little Indian	United Kingdom/USA
Josh Raskin & John Lennon	I Met The Walrus	Josh Raskin			Canada