Give It Away, Now: More MTV Mavericks

09/19/2005 3:21 PM, AP
Jake Coyle

A quick rundown of the three subjects of the latest Directors Label DVD releases: ___

STEPHANE SEDNAOUI

WHO: "The first thing about Stephane Sednaoui is that he is much cooler than anybody in his music videos," Bono says on the DVD. "He looks better, chicks like him more and he has a French accent."

WHAT: Most famous for the desert dance of "Give it Away" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the wavy "Mysterious Ways" by U2 and Alanis Morissette's schizophrenic car ride, "Ironic" — which he says he thought of because "the song was like different characters."

WHY: "I really want to participate," Sednaoui says. "Maybe I would like to be in front of the camera — that could be my secret, that I'd love to be the singer or performer. Through these artists, I really connect to the music."

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ANTON CORBIJN

WHO: Son a Dutch preacher, Corbijn is foremost a photographer who has snapped some of the most indelible images in rock 'n' roll. Says Michael Stipe of REM: "Anton has never taken a bad picture."

WHAT: U2's "One," Joy Division's "Atmosphere," Depeche Mode's "Walking in My Shoes" and Nirvana's "Heart Shaped Box." Kurt Cobain said of the latter: "That video came closer to what I've seen in my mind — what I've envisioned than any other video. ... It was just perfect." He's now working on his first feature film, "Control," about the life of Ian Curtis, the Joy Division singer who killed himself in 1980.

WHY: Corbijn says, "I never wanted to be a music director." His upbringing has yielded religious themes that are pervasive in his videos: "I think they're so deep in me that it's very hard for them to stop rising to the surface." Having seen the music video progress from its early stages in the '80s, he remembers record companies saying of his work, "We shouldn't sponsor this kind of stuff. We're not the arts council."

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JONATHAN GLAZER

WHO: The Brit has moved to films with the critically acclaimed "Sexy Beast" and the less popular "Birth," with Nicole Kidman.

WHAT: His most famous video is the moving floor of Jamiroquai's "Virtual Insanity." He also made the creepy Radiohead video for "Karma Police" and "Rabbit in Your Headlight" by UNKLE — which shows the determinism of a muttering man walking down a tunnel, repeatedly getting hit my oncoming traffic. He has also made some of the best commercials of recent years, including ads for Guinness and Stella Artois.

WHY: "The videos actually feel very personal to me," Glazer says. "Believe it or not, even the ads. Anything I undertake, whatever the medium, I'm absolutely committed to making it as well as I can." He adds, "If anything is worth seeing, it'll be seen, people will find it. I've been threatened that if I made things this way, it won't ever see the light of day — but they do."