English Version
Tomorrow at 9pm the winners of the 9th edition of the Berlin Music Video Awards will be announced on a livestream show. The BMVA is for sure one of the most prestigious music video festivals in Europe, and probably the craziest. 140 videos have been selected for the 2021 nominations, and there will be awards for 15 categories such as Best Narrative, Best Cinematography, Best Low Budget and so on, but also the iconic Most Trashy, plus the most coveted awards of Best Music Video.
We got the chance to have a chat with Aviel Silook, the producer of the event. Silook has been organizing events since the age of 17. While he studied psychology in his twenties he DJ’d for a living, produced music and organized live shows and nightlife events. At age 27 he moved to Berlin, left behind his psychology career and focused on bigger scale events. In the course of the interview, he talks about the difficulties of organizing the event during the pandemic, the selection and judging process and the spirit of the festival.
Hi Aviel, how is it going? It’s unfortunate that this year the BMVA would be in the form of a livestream, due to the pandemic. What have been the biggest challenges in organizing this edition with all the uncertainties linked to Covid-19?
Technically, making an online show is much easier, we get to do things with less time pressure. However, I feel bad for people who really suffer from the pandemic and lost their loved ones. Even if we could have the event this year, it felt a bit odd, like celebrating right after a funeral. I guess we need some time to get back to normal life. We also have many guests from other countries outside of Europe and we want them all to be able to be with us at the event. It’s nicer to wait and have it properly all together in the next year.
Probably the most important feature of the BMVA is the diversity it brings: videos of all kinds of budgets and from so many different countries. Was this always your intention since you launched the festival?
One childhood friend who visited me in Berlin explained it better than I could. He said that the festival is an extraction of all the influences that I picked while growing up, he said that I always liked guests, I loved different cultures, strange people, languages and I was staying up at night to watch uncensored versions of videos.. To me, it all feels natural, I get to express myself and let other people express themselves on my platform, it feels great.
How does the selection process work at BMVA?
The selection process is getting harder each year. In total we have 140 different videos. For us it’s important to keep the selection as diverse as possible, to make sure we have videos from as many countries as possible, as many music genres, languages, topics, film genres and representations of different issues.
It’s really hard to maneuver when there are so many guidelines and growing expectations from our network. I’ll present a common dilemma: this year there was a trend of police brutality in the videos we received, so it was clear to us that among the selected videos there will be at least one or two videos with this theme. In such cases, we have to make sure that the videos are not too similar, the topic should be presented differently and if the language and music genre can be different as well it’s better. We won’t disqualify a video just because there is a trend, if a topic is presented originally we are happy to include it. In our team we always consult internally and then also with the jury
when it’s a tough decision.
Can you tell us a bit about the jury: who is forming part of it this year and how does it work?
This year we have in total 37 jury members (3 or 4 per category), Among the jury we have some fantastic professionals, people who stand behind huge projects like Christoph Schinko who worked on movies like Jurassic World and Harry Potter 3 or Federico Abib who worked on Spiderman Homecoming, Thor Ragnarok and other Marvel films.
If there is something I don’t like doing it’s name dropping but I can promise you that each one of our jury members was cherry picked. What is even more important than the technical aspect is the taste of the judges or their familiarity with our spirit. The BMVA likes to present a set of diverse winning videos at the end of each edition, we take reliable jury members who will watch the videos with their full attention, people with big projects behind them and some style too.
This is the ninth edition of the BMVA. Looking back to where you started, how do you feel now?
What have been the most important moments throughout the history of the festival?
I’ve learned a lot. Every year, when I just start getting comfortable, something always reminds me how much work is still to be done. Next year, we will celebrate 10 years, the “kid festival” will become a “teenager” and with that, more responsibilities and expectations. The most important thing I’ve learned is perhaps to stay flexible and always have backups. When you take into consideration that surprises will show up (no matter what) so you are not surprised anymore, you stay calm and operate under control. In such a stormy environment, stability is the most important commodity these days, as a producer you need to be the pillar in the lives of many people. You have to project 100% certainty to your team, your network, sponsors and clients while you yourself have almost none.
I guess that right now you are working on the livestream show, which will be on the 29th of July, 9pm. Should we expect any surprise?
It was important for us to have more guests in the studio this year, this is why we took the idea of the fashion show that we usually have at our event and we found a way to include it as well. Besides that, we will have a DJ on stage to make the show more interactive. There are other surprises that I can not talk about so I guess your readers will have to watch the show 🙂