Gregory Ohrel's video for Malian singer-songwriter Fatoumata Diawara's Nsera was one of only two multiple award winners at the UK Music Video Awards last month - the other was Mette's Mama's Eyes - and the only video to win in two Technical Achievement categories.Filmed in Senegal, it's a series of brilliantly realised set-pieces, where traditional Africa meets the modern world in various ways, for good and ill. Without being as fiercely polemical, or as harrowing, as Ohrel's acclaimed video for Residente's This Is Not America, it shares that's video's imaginative and ambitious approach - and it's celebration of humanity in all its diversity.Much of the credit for the vivid imagination and harnessing of the modern and the traditional in each scene is down to the work of production designer Anaïs Profit and stylist Dabby Naval - and both were duly recognised at the UKMVAs 2023.Anaïs Profit won the award for Best Production Design in a Video, while Dabby Naval won the Best Styling in a Video award - both richly deserved.
Promonews - 15th Nov 2023