‘Tis better to give than to receive, as they say, so on the occasion of RESFEST’s 10th birthday, we’re giving you a present: a decade-long survey of some of the best music videos ever to play the festival. Since RESFEST has always championed the music video as an art form in its own right, this greatest hits compilation is, not surprisingly, a truly stellar program. Don’t come looking for chart-topping singles, though H5’s amazing “Remind Me” for Röyksopp is one exception. But the films gathered here are strong in their own right, serving to enhance and augment their songs in unexpected, brilliant ways. Several grin-inducing audience favorites appear, including Ruben Fleischer’s “We Know Something You Don’t Know” for DJ Format, with its hilarious breakdancing furries, and Alex Budovsky’s manic animation for (The Real) Tuesday Weld’s catchy-as-all-get-out “Bathtime in Clernkenwell,” alongside classics for Air, Cornelius, UNKLE, Phoenix and more.

BATHTIME IN CLERKENWELL: (THE REAL) TUESDAY WELD
US | 3:20 | 2003
DIRECTOR: ALEX BUDOVSKY
RECORD COMPANY: DREAMY RECORDS
The Royal Cuckoo Legion unleashes its first strike against humanity, or at least on one hapless chap ignoring repeated morning alarms. Simple yet clever black-and-white animation puts the avian onslaught in humorous perspective, with the winged squadron deploying its assault first on one lazy lout and then the whole of London, with (The Real) Tuesday Weld’s jaunty, jazzy house lending a benevolent tone to their tactics.

DROP (DO IT AGAIN): CORNELIUS
JAPAN | 5:16 | 2002
DIRECTOR: KOICHIRO TSUJIKAWA
PRODUCER: TOYOTARO SHIGEMORI
RECORD COMPANY: MATADOR
Hot on the heels of ambient-pop maestro Cornelius’ 2002 album Point came a dazzling five-video suite, three of the works courtesy of director Koichiro Tsujikawa. For Cornelius’ live show, Tsujikawa remixed the visuals from his original “Drop” clip – a child’s study of liquid textures in a bathroom sink – by removing everything but the water, as seen here.

ELECTRONIC PERFORMERS: AIR
FRANCE | 5:41 | 2004
DIRECTOR: LAURENT BOURDOISEAU
PRODUCTION COMPANY: INDEPENDENT
RECORD LABEL: ASTRALWERKS/SOURCE
This video explores, and extrapolates from, the similarities between strands of DNA, the Cord Theory of quantum physics, electrical pulses and neurons, all framed by elegantly formed and animated sound wave fluctuations.

EUROSTAR: YEYE
FRANCE | 3:54 | 2004
DIRECTOR: GABRIEL MALAPRADE
PRODUCER: MAGALIE DAULEU
PRODUCTION COMPANY: LE VILLAGE
EDITOR/POST: GABRIEL MALAPRADE
ONLINE EDITOR: DURAN, PARIS
RECORD LABEL: PLATINUM RECORDS
This video is comprised of an epic collection of set-ups, the incongruous activities of the characters in each scene playing into the setting of the next. The concept is based on the French children’s game Marabout, wherein the end word in a phrase has to sound like the beginning of the next.

EYE FOR AN EYE: UNKLE
UK | 6:20 | 2002
DIRECTOR: SHYNOLA AND RUTH LINGFORD
PRODUCER: PAUL FENNELLY
PRODUCTION COMPANY: OIL FACTORY (UK)
CO-DESIGNER: ROBERT DEL NAJA
Appropriating Fantasia music to set the stage for this devastating war allegory, Shynola invents a berry-rich Eden populated by a doughy, peace-loving race. Thundering UNKLE beats usher in the air-dropped arrival of a grossly distended mother of all war machines, which offers its teats to the gentle natives for a pacifying suck. The beast soon reveals its perfidious nature, the innocents are undone and the war rumbles on towards other unsullied climes.

FUNKY SQUAREDANCE: PHOENIX
US | 9:00 | 2003
DIRECTOR: ROMAN COPPOLA
PRODUCER: JULIE FOND
PRODUCTION COMPANY: THE DIRECTORS BUREAU
EDITING/FX: AV CLUB (JOHANNES GAMBLE & BUCKY FUKUMOTO)
PRODUCER: SARA SEIFERHELD
RECORD COMPANY: SOURCE
TOOLS: APPLE MAC G4, AFTER EFFECTS, PHOTOSHOP, ILLUSTRATOR, FINAL CUT PRO, POST-IT NOTES
Here, Roman Coppola offers a novel response to the questions raised by the task of shooting a music video for a nine-minute song with a minimal budget. The director draws on ideas contained within Phoenix’s “Funky Squaredance” track, combining them with a wealth of more personal images, abstract ideas and sequences created by The Directors Bureau’s AV Club.

HELTER SKELTER: MEAT BEAT MANIFESTO
US | 4:30 | 1997
DIRECTOR/EDITOR: BEN STOKES
PRODUCER: VINCE GENOVESE
CAST: JACK DANGERS, LINDY KWOCK
PRODUCTION COMPANY: H-GUN
TOOLS: AFTER EFFECTS, PHOTOSHOP, 35MM STILLS, MEDIA 100
This video presents a trip through the mind, freezing moments in time and showing them in the round. Water, feathers, chains and debris hang in the air around Meat Beat Manifesto’s Jack Dangers and the Helter Skeltress. Jack is seen strangling a clown, and other clown imagery punctuates the clip periodically, to disturbing effect.

HITCHCOCK: PHOENIX FOUNDATION
NEW ZEALAND | 3:29 | 2005
DIRECTOR/ANIMATOR: REUBEN SUTHERLAND
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: SPENCER FRIEND
PRODUCTION COMPANY: JOY RIDER FILMS
RECORD LABEL: FM RECORDS
TOOLS: AFTER EFFECTS
Electric cars may be the future, but certain shadowy organizations would prefer to keep gas guzzlers on the road. The two modes of transportation go head to head in a choreographed piece of calculated road rage.

INFORMATION CONTRABAND: MONEY MARK
US | 3:58 | 2001
DIRECTOR: LOGAN
PRODUCER: KEVIN SHAPIRO
CINEMATOGRAPHER: ERIC FOSTER
EDITOR: PHILIP SHTOLL
ANIMATORS: ALEXEI TYLEVICH, BEN CONRAD, JOEL LAVA, HAN LEE, ARYA SENBOUTARAJ, PAUL SEYMOUR, CRAIG TOLLIFSON, BRIAN WON
RECORD COMPANY: EMPEROR NORTON
TOOLS: AFTER EFFECTS, 3-D CAMERA, SEVERAL MAC COMPUTERS
The West Coast design posse goes freestyle wild, using Thai B-movie poster imagery and casting the once-a-Beastie, always-a-Beastie keyboardist as a reality-challenged cab driver and action-star wannabe.

INNER SPACE DENTAL COMMANDER
US | 4:00 | 1999
DIRECTORS: SYD GARON, ERIC HENRY
PRODUCERS: YOGA FROG, DJ Q-BERT
ILLUSTRATOR: DOUG CUNNINGHAM
ANIMATOR: TRISHA GOLUBEV
COMPOSER: DJ Q-BERT
TOOLS: LIGHTWAVE, POSER4, AFTER EFFECTS, EDITDV
Inner Space Dental Commander was just the first chapter of DJ Q-Bert’s full-length animated movie, Wavetwisters, which showed at RESFEST a year later. This segment offers the ultimate meeting between turntablism and oral surgery.

MIDFIELDING: MIDFIELD GENERAL
UK | 4:08 | 2000
DIRECTOR: STEPHEN MCGREGOR
RECORD COMPANY: SKINT
A squiggly animation of UK comedian Noel Fielding expatiates against popular media’s preferential treatment of exotic African animals as a precursor to arriving with a group of animals in a Trojan shrew, camouflaged as picture-snapping foreign tourists. Carnage ensues. Serving as a comic but biting allegory for European colonization of the “Dark Continent,” McGregor’s video achieves an eclecticism worthy of big beat architect and Skint Records founder Damian “Midfield General” Harris.

MOANER: UNDERWORLD
UK | 4:10 | 1997
DIRECTOR/CINEMATOGRAPHY/EDITOR: GRAHAM WOOD
MUSIC: UNDERWORLD
PRODUCTION COMPANY: TOMATO
With his extended close-ups of Underworld’s head moaner, Karl Hyde, Graham Wood of Tomato takes oral fixation to unprecedented places.

STEPPING OFF: JASON FORREST
USA | 3:55 | US
DIRECTOR/EFFECTS: JON WATTS
PRODUCER: JEFFREY KAPLAN
ASSOCIATE PRODUCERS: JESSICA WATTS
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: CHRISTOPHER FORD OF WAVERLY FILMS
EDITOR: DUNCAN SKILES
STYLIST: ROSIE SHARP
CAST: BRANDON BAYLES, ROBERT FEELEY, NICK NOVICKI
RECORD LABEL: SONIG
TOOLS: 16MM, PREMIERE, AFTER EFFECTS
This video’s actually a rare bootleg tour film for legendary Middle Earth rockers The Jason Forrest Jammasters, wherein an elf-dwarf-wizard combo mixes equal parts magic, riffs and on-tour decadence.

THE CHILD: ALEX GOPHER
UK | 3:05 | 2000
DIRECTOR: ANTOINE BARDOU-JACQUET
PRODUCER: CHARLES PETIT
EDITOR: MARIE GASCOIN
SPECIAL EFFECTS: JACQUEMIN PIEL
3D MODELING: CHRISTINE GATTO AND SYLVIAN PELLODI
SOUND DESIGN: GERMAIN BOULAY
RECORD COMPANY: V2
In the early 1900s, Dadaist artists experimented with typography, making printed text malleable, dynamic, spatial. Antoine Bardou-Jacquet goes a step further here, creating an entire moving world composed of words instead of images. It’s a thrilling gambit that works poetically and conceptually, making visible the terms of the world around us.

THE SOUND OF VIOLENCE: CASSIUS
FRANCE | 2003 | 3:31
DIRECTOR: ALEX & MARTIN
PRODUCTION COMPANY: PARTIZAN
RECORD LABEL: SOURCE/ASTRALWERKS
Alex & Martin’s latest for Cassius soars over rolling hillsides and purple hued fields and cross horizons populated by cubist abstractions, psychedelic invertebrates and impossible perspectives.

THEME FROM GUTBUSTER: BENTLEY RHYTHM ACE
UK | 4:37 | 2000
DIRECTOR: GARTH JENNINGS
PRODUCERS: NICK GOLDSMITH, PETUR H. BJARNASON
OFFLINE EDITOR: MING (DOM LEUNG)
PRODUCTION: HAMMER & TONGS / PAN ARCTICA
CHOREOGRAPHER: HELENA JONSDOTTIR
RECORD COMPANY: PARLOPHONE
Deep in the icy tundra an Eskimo must dance maniacally to generate enough heat to free a pair of tetherball players from a block of ice. Garth Jennings of Hammer & Tongs claimed he’s pitched the same idea many times before, but it found a perfect match with the Bentley Rhythm Ace track, and the result is amusing and visually arresting.

TIMBER: HEXSTATIC
UK | 5:00 | 1997
DIRECTOR: STUART WARREN-HILL
SOUND DESIGNERS/COMPOSERS: STUART WARREN-HILL, MATT BLACK, JOHNATHAN MOORE
PRODUCTION COMPANY: HEXSTATIC/COLDCUT
Every week, a forest the size of 700,000 football fields is destroyed or damaged. It is estimated that 50,000 species are becoming extinct or endangered as a result of the loss of habitat. Intimately integrating sound and image, Hexstatic’s Stuart Warren-Hill seeks here to offer new possibilities for awakening human consciousness to the natural world around us.

WE KNOW SOMETHING YOU DON'T KNOW: DJ FORMAT
US | 3:06 | 2003
DIRECTOR/PRODUCER: RUBEN FLEISCHER
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DAMIAN ACEVEDO
EDITOR: ADAM PARKER
FX: MATT BENNETT
RECORD LABEL: PIAS RECORDINGS
Los Angeles-based Ruben Fleischer takes it back to the concrete streets, fuzzy b-boy style. Rather than settle for run-of-the-mill human talent, the director brought in the best tiger, turtle, bear and shark breakers available to rock the DJ Format beat.