The Prism Prize, awarded to the top Canadian music video of the year, was handed out last night in Toronto to director Martin C. Pariseau for his work on Kaytranada’s “Lite Spots.”
The video features the Montreal electronic artist building a robot and proceeding to teach him how to dance. Throughout the course of the video, the robot learns new dance moves from people he encounters while walking around with Kaytranada.
The award is the latest in a series for Kaytranada, who won best electronic artist at the Juno Awards earlier this year and the Polaris Music Prize late last year for his debut album, 99.9%.
Pariseau’s video beat out a short list of contenders that included Grimes, A Tribe Called Red, July Talk, BadBadNotGood and Pup, among others. For winning the award, Pariseau receives $15,000.
Congratulations to director @mcpariseau, winner of the $15K #PrismPrize Grand Prize for LITE SPOTS by @KAYTRANADA 👏🏽 pic.twitter.com/6SFRqtG6s3
— Prism Prize (@PrismPrize) May 15, 2017
Other awards handed out included the Audience Award — voted on by the public — which was won by Andy Shauf’s “The Magician,” and directed by Winston Hacking.
Additionally, the Lipsett Award was handed out to Kid.Studio for its unique and innovative approach to the music video medium. The Special Achievement Award was presented to Revolver Films for their ongoing work in Canadian music videos since the early 1980s.
A new prize this year, the Hi-Fidelity Award, was created to recognize a band or artist “who has used video art to represent their work in a consistently creative and innovative way.” The inaugural recipient was July Talk.
The Prism Prize is voted on and decided by a jury of 120 Canadian music and film industry professionals .