EnergaCAMERIMAGE announced that Joseph Khan, the distinguished music videos’ director who worked countless stars and bands including Shakira, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Eminem and U2, will come to Toruń to collect the Award for Achievements in the Field of Music Videos for Director at this year’s EnergaCAMERIMAGE. He confirmed his arrival the day before we received the sad news that due to personal reasons Hype Williams will not be able to make it to Poland this year.
Joseph Kahn was born in Pusan, South Korea. His family lived in Livorno, Italy until he immigrated to the United States at age 7. He began his directing career in his teens, shooting music videos for local musicians. After attending NYU Film School for a year, he dropped out to direct low budget music videos for gangster rappers.
This lead to a celebrated body of work that’s included hundreds of award-winning commercials and billions of music video views. He has won multiple Grammys, MTV VMAs, Clios, Emmys, and honored with a lifetime achievement award by the UK Music Video Awards (The Icon Award).
Artists Kahn has directed videos for include Taylor Swift, Imagine Dragons, Eminem, One Republic, U2, Katy Perry, The Chemical Brothers, Lady Gaga, Gwen Stefani, Blink 182, Wu-Tang Clan, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, Aerosmith, Faith Hill, Moby, Jamiroquai, Justin Timberlake, George Michael, Kelly Clarkson, Janet Jackson, Black Eyed Peas, Beyonce, and many more. He won his first Grammy for Eminem’s Without Me video and his second for Taylor Swift’s Bad Blood. His video for Muse Knights of Cydonia won the Los Angeles Film Festival Audience Award. Katy Perry’s Waking Up in Vegas won the MVPA Video of the Year. He won the American Country Music Award’s Video of the Year for Forever Country.
He has directed commercials for Samsung, Maybelline, Johnny Walker, Acura, BMW, Mercedes, Ford, Vodafone, Budweiser, British Telecom, Miller, Bacardi, Adidas, Asics, HP, Saab, T-Mobile, Target, Coors Light, Nascar, Burger King, and PlayStation.
In 2004 he made his feature film debut with the Warner Brothers cult film Torque. His self-financed independent film Detention premiered in 2011 at the South by Southwest Film Festival. POWER/RANGERS released in 2015 is a satirical self-financed “fan film” starring James Van Der Beek and Katee Sackhoff that became a phenomenon that exploded across the internet, gathering tens of millions of views in a single day and sparking global news coverage.
