Cool Hunting

RESFEST, now in its 9th year, premieres this week (15 - 18 September) at New York's Tribeca Performing Arts Center, followed by more than 40 cities worldwide. One of the few showcases for cutting-edge music video and motion graphics work, these two exclusive images are both by Japanese directors featured in the 5th annual "By Design" series in RESFEST 2005's jam-packed lineup. Culling the latest in animation and broadcast design, the program this time around brings this duo, the dreamy Exit/Delete First Sight (pictured) by Cruz + Sun An and Juryuko's collage-based The Poetry of the Suburbs (pictured, after the jump), along with others, like the Flash-based poppy animated video by Kangaroo Alliance for indie faves Of Montreal's equally poppy, "Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games." More on the music video front includes a retrospective of Beck videos, a unique curatorial choice that seemingly covers a who's who of todays premiere music video directors, including Stéphane Sednaoui (who is also New York's keynote), Spike Jones, Michel Gondry, Mark Romanek, Shynola, and the recent Mad magazine-inspired video for "Girl" by Motion Theory. Traktor, the Scandanavian force behind Madonna's Grammy-nominated "Ray of Light" video and the inappropriately humorous Turkish cliff diving spots for Fox Sports, also get a retrospective, divided into the four seasons of sex, violence, fear, and confusion.

Heavy on street culture, RESFEST's New York edition features a panel called "Street Art or Not?", the non-fiction feature, Infamy, about the graffitti-obssessed, and Just For Kicks, a documentary on sneaker fans that interviews Russell Simmons, Damon Dash, Raekwon, and Futura, among others.

Also, look out for the Mike Mills' panel where he'll screen his 1999 meditation on suburbia, the short The Architecture of Reassurance, and the North American premiere of Not How, What or Why But Yes, the perfect final prelude to his highly-anticipated first feature Thumbsucker (which will be shown at RESFEST San Francisco and released nationwide this fall).