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Flux is putting on quarterly screenings at the Hammer Museum at UCLA and one of those screenings is tonight. The main program is the LA premiere of David Shane’s short Playdate and Kirsten Lepore’s animated film Move Mountain,and for music video fans the screening also promises "new music videos for David Bowie, Passion Pit, Gaslamp Killer among others", so if you are in the vicinity, it sounds like you shoud be there.

At the beginning of this month, we traveled out to LA to attend the Los Angeles Music Video Festival. Co-directed by Sami Kriegstein and Colleen Curlin, LAMVF is one of the few things that allow us to take a break from our jobs as websitemen and venture out into the crazy world outside out offices. The festival ran for 4 nights, and in addition to screening lots of awesome music videos, featured some really interesting panels, as well as the “Life’s a Pitch” contest where four directors pitched a music video idea to the Five Knives' song "The Rising" in front of a live audience - and the band’s favorite idea got a $7,500 budget and 48 hours to make the video (plus a $2,500 prize). We were lucky enough to help Sami and Colleen judge the festival this year, so we were particularly excited to finally get to see everything up on the big screen. The fest was held at The Downtown Independent, which once again proved to be the perfect venue for music video watchin’ and IPA drinkin’.

Spectacle: The Music Video, the first museum exhibition dedicated to music videos, opens tomorrow at Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, New York. Jonathan and Meg Wells of Flux curate the exhibit, and its goal is to “explore the art, history, future, and influence of the art form.”

We were able to check out Spectacle earlier today and can report that it is awesome and absolutely something you should check out if you’re in New York.  Enjoy a sneak peak (courtesy of our Vine account) at just a few of the amazing features Spectacle has to offer, and look out for more Spectacle coverage later in the week.

Like most of the tech, film, and music world, we were in Austin, Texas this week covering SXSW. We were there, of course, to cover the music video portion of the event, which started with the first music video program screening on Monday at 11am. The selection of music videos for 2013 was a strong case for why music videos deserve a spot next to short films and features like they enjoy at SXSW. It was also, as always, really fun to see music videos in a theatre with a great sound system. For a look of all of the videos in the music video lineup, check out this post.

Last night, I headed down to Anthology Film Archive in New York City to see the premiere of Kevin Slack's short film Every Word Handwritten, presented by The Gaslight Anthem. The film is based on The Gaslight Anthem's music video "Handwritten," which Kevin also directed. The house was packed, so packed in fact that I almost had to sit in the front row until two Gaslight Anthem fans let me squeeze in between them somewhere near the middle. For those of you who weren't in attendance with me, Rolling Stone has it streaming. You can also take a look at the "Handwritten" music video below. 

The Grammys have a pretty large array of awards to give out (Best Surround Sound Album, anyone?) but they also have a music video category. The 55th Grammy nominees were released tonight, and here are your nominees for best short form music video:

The MTV Europe Music Award nominations are in, and they have the only thing we care about - a music video category! Here's who is up for "Best Video" (director names added by us, they were not in the list).

Best Video
M.I.A., "Bad Girls" dir: Roman Gavras
Lady Gaga, "Marry the Night" dir: Lady Gaga
Katy Perry, "Wide Awake" dir: Tony T. Datis
Rihanna (featuring Calvin Harris), "We Found Love" dir: Melina Matsoukas
PSY, "Gangnam Style"

We're lucky to have the fantastic LA Music Video Festival here in the US, but if you are in the UK, you might not know that you've also got a dedicated music video festival, and it's happening all this month! The BBC Music Video festival is the UK's only dedicated music video festival, and it's unique for a few reasons besides being an event dedicated to music videos.

Doug and I did a little liveblog of the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards last night, and we both had a confession - we hadn't watched the MTV Video Music Awards in a long time. Me because I gave up cable a few years ago, and who knows why Doug hasn't watched it. Too cool, I guess.

So it was an interesting experience seeing the awards show that I had really enjoyed in late middle school/early high school. MTV always put on a really entertaining show, according to my memory, but now I'm watching as someone who has an interest in the music video industry, and the experience from that perspective is a lot different.

The 2012 Music Video Awards are tonight and since Doug and Adam would be watching and commenting to each other on Skype anyways, we thought we'd set up a liveblog! We'll be starting at 7:30pm EST. Join us!