Enigma videography
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This list of Enigma music videos lists out the music videos based on the songs from Enigma's albums. The list is in the chronological order of the single's release.
Contents |
[edit] MCMXC a. D.
| Song title | Personnel | External links | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| "Sadeness (Part I)" | Director: Michel Guimbard Producer: Thierry Sadoun |
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| A man is writing at a desk with a quill pen when he falls asleep. He then descends into a dream where he wears a red cloak, and explores the ruins of an old cathedral. During his exploration, the screen fades in and out from the cathedral into one of a woman. One of the most striking objects in the cathedral is a vivid rose, contrasting the decay of his surroundings. He is then brought back into the cathedral and tries to run away after opening a door that leads to darkness. He then disappears into the ground and the cloak left behind floats into the darkness, and he wakes up from his dream abruptly. | |||||
| "Principles of Lust" | Director: Howard Greenhalgh Producer: Megan Hollister/Pam James [1] |
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| The scene shows an orgy of sorts, with a large group of adult males and females engaging in lascivious behavior with each other. The setting is in a non-descript room with a heavy red color setting, with heavy accents of rose and nude tones as well. The characters wear what appears to be lingerie from the Victorian era, as well as European-style wigs and accessory jewelry. For the length of the song, only soft-core sexual acts being performed, with nothing overtly obscene being displayed. British model Laura Berkley is the main female character in the video. | |||||
| "Mea Culpa (Part II)" | Director: Howard Greenhalgh Producer: Pam James |
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| The video for uses the "Orthodox Mix" of the song instead of the album version and is usually credited as "Mea Culpa Part II". Most of the video is cast in a sepia tone and features an endless plume of smoke superimposed over the images. The video begins and ends with a kneeling woman swaying as if in prayer, with close-ups revealing that she wears a pair of heavy gauntlets. In-between are scenes of a young woman either running through an expansive cathedral's courtyard or being carted away in a rickety wagon as if to a witch trial. In a highly unusual move for Enigma videos, the band's name is featured prominently in several scenes alongside what appears to be an alchemical symbol. | |||||
| "The Rivers of Belief" | Director: Howard Greenhalgh Producer: Megan Hollister |
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| The two settings for the music video are medieval Europe and rural India. It starts of with a few crusade-like images, and proceeds to showing clips of an Indian boy jumping into, and running in, a yellow river. The rest of the video interleaves those two settings, along with some clips of the singer, Michael Cretu. | |||||
[edit] The Cross of Changes
| Song title | Personnel | External links | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| "Return to Innocence" | Director: Julien Temple | ||||
| The music video begins in black and white as an old man tends to a fruit farm, plucks a fruit from a tree and bites it, before lying down on the grass and dying. The fruits then rise up back into the tree and the video now turns to colour. Then his life is shown in reverse together with his wife working and living in the countryside.
The scene then goes back until the time the couple are married at the church, they engage lovemaking in the farmhouse, to the time when to they were just young adults. The scene then goes back even further after that - the woman is now a young girl just learning how to write and the man is now a young boy, who is taking a bite a fruit. The music video then ends with the baby boy in his baptism. During the length of the video, a white unicorn, representing innocence and purity, appears several times as it gallops in reverse. The music video was filmed in Málaga, Spain, |
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| "Age of Loneliness" | Director: Big TV! | ||||
| The video contains lots of clips from central New York and daily New York life. Both urban and suburban parts of the town are shown. Most of these clips also have people of different ages, races and gender floating and swimming mid-air. Some of them are shown wet and clothesless, and they are also seemingly invisible to the surrounding New Yorkers. The videos has no apparent story, instead relying on the surreal images to capture the viewer.
At the very end of the video clip, a taxi passes by a cinema which has a signboard that says "Almost Full Moon". That is a probable but unconfirmed reference to a song with the same title in the next Enigma album, released in 1996. |
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| "The Eyes Of Truth" | Director: Julien Temple | ||||
| The video is set in a rural part of Nepal. It begins by observing beekeepers at work but quickly turns to a woman placing her baby in a reed basket and floating it down a river. The baby is eventually found by elephants and raised by them. A few years later, the child begins a journey with the elephant, passing through mountains and forests before reaching a village where he is welcomed by exuberant crowds as a messianic figure. | |||||
| "Out from the Deep" | Director: Ángel Gracia[2] | ||||
| In the music video, a diver wearing a standard diving dress clutches a flashlight and explores an ancient sunken city. All of these while fishes swim throughout the city. He comes upon a big door and opens it and it engulfens him in a bright light. In the next scene the diver awakes and finds himself in a room with Roman-era frescoes. The people in the frescoes start to come alive as the city cracks and crumbles with the diver in it. In the last scene, the diver has been turned into a fresco himself, on a chunk of the city wall. | |||||
[edit] Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi!
| Song title | Personnel | External links | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| "Beyond the Invisible" | Director: Julien Temple | ||||
| In the music video, a girl escapes from an unhappy home and into a forest where forest nymphs reside. There she sees a couple figure skating in the middle of the forest and hides in the bushes to watch them secretly. At the end, she is spotted by one of the "man-machines" and leaves together with them as they and the other two "man-machines" fade and disappear. The skaters are Finnish European Figure Skating Championship winners, Susanna Rahkamo and Petri Kokko.
The music video is influenced by Michael Cretu's vision of ice skating, forest nymphs, and "man-machines" (the latter of which also adorn the album cover). |
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| "T.N.T. for the Brain" | Director: Anthea Benton | ||||
| The video follows the dreams of a handsome young man dressed in a style reminiscent of Victorian fashion. The man finds himself before several doorways, behind each lies a different woman. The first is a woman dressed in a similarly Victorian style with an elaborate mask tattooed onto her face. She moves unnaturally and wears meancing silver jewelry on her hands. The second woman is dressed simply but wears a pink wicker mask. The third rests in a spiderweb. The final women he meets are a pair of heavily made-up twins. Between these scenes is featured a mysterious man dressed in what appears to be a matador's outfit. | |||||
[edit] The Screen Behind the Mirror
| Song title | Personnel | External links | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| "Gravity of Love" | Director: Thomas Job | ||||
| In the video a high society masquerade ball is being held at a huge mansion. Even the wait staff wear black masks. Early on in the video, we are granted a glimpse of the party going on "behind the mirror", where the guests wear significantly less and a host of unusual characters hold sway, including a strange woman dressed in white and attended by young girls and a severe dominatrix-like woman offering Eucharist in an eroticized priest's outfit. As the video progresses, the guests behind the mirror give in more and more to lust and hedonism, while the strange woman convulses as if giving birth. At the climax of the song, things suddenly change and the party behind the mirror beings to die down. The guests in the real world run from the mansion, leaving only the wait staff and a final image of the strange woman standing naked as if reborn. | |||||
| "Push the Limits" | Director: Thomas Job | ||||
| The video for features a young man and woman in three different but related storylines. The two approach a two-player arcade machine set in an open field. Both of them pick a character to represent in the game, which appears to resemble kendo. They are shown putting on their armor and preparing themselves in the game, the boy dressed in black and the woman in white. Meanwhile, a third set of images shows the man and woman simulating sex in a bed that sits in the same field as the video game cabinets, but both are wearing simple masks with sad expressions implying the simulated acts are not entirely consensual.
As the video progresses and the two kendo fighters duel, the bed scenes become more intense. The man gains the upper hand in both scenes but the woman fights back until black fighter falls. The couple walks away from the machine and the boy kneels before the girl in defeat. In the video game storyline, the white fighter removes their mask and it is revealed that the man played the white fighter the entire time. The woman is now lifeless on the floor and her armour dissolves, so does her own body too, leaving behind flower petals in the silhouette of her body. The video is filmed in location in South Africa, and Brazilian model Milene Zardo plays as both the woman and the kendo fighter. |
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[edit] Love Sensuality Devotion: The Greatest Hits
| Song title | Personnel | External links | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| "Turn Around" | Director: Thomas Job | ||||
| The video is partly digitally animated, with the main vocals being sung by a semi transparent animated head. The video has no strong theme and features lot's of random clips from different settings from modern time (rocket takeoff, club dancing, middle-east stargazing). It has quite a lot of clips of women dancing, some of them without clothes, and even while it might seem to have been censored (using rotating balls or bubbles), the keen eye will easily see that this video is not safe for work. | |||||
[edit] Voyageur
The third single from the album, "Following the Sun", is the only Enigma single not to have a music video accompanied with it.
| Song title | Personnel | External links | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| "Voyageur" | Director: Thomas Job | ||||
| In the video we follow a middle age woman on a night out. The woman moves in a very jerky way, and also influences anyone in her immediate vicinity to move the same way. She visits a restaurant, a nightclub and later a party. One of the stronger images in the video is where the woman goes past a crucifix, and turns around mimicking the way Jesus hangs on the cross. After proceeding to have a cuddle session with another woman visiting the party, she goes back home. Just outside her gate, she stops, takes out her earphones and starts moving normally. | |||||
| "Boum-Boum" | Director: Charles Eames | ||||
| The song in the video is the "Chicane Club Version". It features yet again a young man and a very attractive lady in a modern city complete with shining skyscrapers. Both of them spend their time separate from each other during most of the day, and in the middle of the video they meet at a subway station. The two go shopping and sightseeing, as well as flirting with each other in a quiet building hallway. The video ends with both of them together in their apartment, holding each other's hands. | |||||
[edit] 15 Years After
| Song title | Personnel | External links | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| "Hello and Welcome" | Director: Thomas Job | ||||
| The video alternates between German boxer Felix Sturm's training, and clips of Sturm's battles with his opponents in the ring. With every punch that Sturm lands on his opponent, the screen turns into a tinted red. At the very end of the video, a white horse that looks similar to the unicorn from Return to Innocence appears for a brief instant. | |||||
[edit] A Posteriori
No music video has been created for the album A Posteriori, partly due to the fact that the only single from the album which was "Goodbye Milky Way", was cancelled. The album is also due to be released in DVD form in December 2006, whether or not it is a DVD-Audio album or a DVD with graphics, it has not been confirmed yet.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Only Pam James was listed as the producer in the video credits, but other sources also credit Megan Hollister as a producer for the music video.
- ^ Ángel Gracia is a venezuelan director, often known as just the mono-monikered Angel, also winner of MTV's Make My Video competition for his direction on the video True Blue from Madonna.
[edit] References
- EnigmaMusic.com (Dec. 8, 2003). Boum Boum Remixers and Video Director Confirmed. Retrieved May 20, 2006.
- Joar Grimstvedt (Jan. 1, 2006). Enigma: 15 Years After (boxset). Retrieved May 20, 2006.
- Adrian Rode, Marcin Papke (May. 15, 2006). EnigmaCretu.com - Howard Greenhalgh (Exclusive Interview). Retrieved May 20, 2006.
- Joar Grimstvedt (Jan 25, 1994). Enigma: MCMXC a.D. - The Complete Video Album. Retrieved Oct 27, 2006.
- Joar Grimstvedt (Nov 21, 1999). News archive 1999. Retrieved Oct 27, 2006.
- The Enigma Lair (2003). People. Retrieved Oct 27, 2006.
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