VANESSA-MAE CHRONICLE 2009, # 8

Vanessa-Mae in Finland
- A documentary on Finish television devoted to her visit in November 1997 -

Vanessa-Mae is very popular in the Baltic states and she visited this region of Europe frequently during her career - see the Tour dates of Vanessa-Mae. Despite this popularity there, her last visit to Finland dates from 1998 when she played at the indoor carting championships in the Hartwall Arena of Helsinki. Her last concert in Finland was also in the Hartwall Arena on May 2 of 1998 for the Strom On World Tour.

Vanessa-Mae visited Finland during November 1997 to promote her new album Storm. The media in Finland paid quite some attention to Vanessa-Mae's visit and the national television channel broadcasted a special 30 minutes interview documentary devoted to her! We recently discovered that Mediakenraali made the documentary available in 3 parts on YouTube. VMSPOS downloaded all 3 part, merged them to one video that can make available for downloading on request by email. In this chronicle, we will highlight a few aspects contents of the documentary and use screen captures for illustration.

The documentary starts scenes from Vanessa-Mae's video clip Storm, then showing Vanessa-Mae introducing herself saying that she is happy to be in Finland again and that she hopes that the viewers will enjoy the documentary. Then scenes of Vanessa-Mae, being on high heeled boots and wearing a long black coat over a pair of trousers and a white blouse, playing Storm in a park in Helsinki - see the 9 captures shown below.

The interview with Vanessa-Mae follows next, alternated with scenes from video clips, concerts, and other activities. A couple of these scenes with concerts and with other activities will be discussed later; some of these have also been used in Vanessa-Mae live in Berlin 2001 concert video and The Storm On World Tour documentary.

During the interview, Vanessa-Mae was comfortable sitting on a couch next to her female interviewer. Vanessa-Mae had a green top with low cut round neck with a short jacket, trousers and boots. She had two necklaces, one with a precious stone and one with a round pendant with cross cut-out, visible in the opening of her top hanging on her chest. She had her long shining black hair in free style hanging over the shoulders and on her back, framing her face that was obviously very heavily made up - see Vanessa-Mae's impeccable smooth complexion, the smouldering eye make-up of black liner and mascara, dark shadow and accentuated eye brows, and luxuriant red to bring the fullness of her lips to optimum expression! The 14 screen captures below illustrate Vanessa-Mae's self-confident presentation.

The interview dealt with general topics like Vanessa-Mae's social and family background, her feelings about being on the road for concerts, her collection of pets, the stolen Guadagnini violin, her choice for clothes, and so on! After scenes shown from Vanessa-Mae's performance at the reunification of Hong Kong to China, Vanessa-Mae told about her feelings towards China being half Chinese herself, and about how special feeling she had playing basically on British soil a few minutes before midnight, and then suddenly being in China, still playing immediately after midnight. At the end, scenes were shown from her video clip I Am A Doun. The host asked where the clip was filmed, and Vanessa-Mae replied that it was in a small beautiful picturesque church somewhere in London. She also told that the capoera dancers came from Brazil, and she was so impressed by their art because they are so in command of all their movements that they can dance as if it was in slow motion.

Very nice in the documentary is also a scene of Vanessa-Mae rehearsing in a studio with an orchestra for the recording of The Classical Album 1: the 9 captures below come from this scene. Seeing this scene, it is obvious that Vanessa-Mae had an enormous fun during the recording session.

A next illustrative part in the documentary was also filmed in Helsinki during Vanessa-Mae's visit. This scene was filmed in a hotel where Vanessa-Mae did a photo shoot and also interviews with newspapers or magazines. Vanessa-Mae is shown coming into a room, next sitting on comfortable chair for the interviewer and to be filmed and photographed, or sitting behind a desk for a signing session. The 23 screen captures below show Vanessa-Mae in these scenes. Here, she was dressed in her wonderful all silk suit over her fantastic silk bight yellow blouse. The close-ups of her face clearly reveal that Vanessa-Mae was perfectly and very heavily made up here - do notice her immaculate matt toned complexion, the smouldering eye make-up with definition using black liner and mascara , strongly accentuated eye brows and the excessive red lipstick. One moment, after she took her seat, Vanessa-Mae carefully caressed her hair, left and right, out of her face to her back, consciously avoiding to her face in order to keep her make-up in perfect conditions. 

At several points in the documentary short intervals are shown with scenes of various activities of Vanessa-Mae. See the captures below with Vanessa-Mae skiing downhill, being followed by her mother on entering a room where drinks are served to her honour, and being seated on the back of a camel.

The documentary has also scenes from various performances. See the captures below that show Vanessa-Mae in New York (the famous yellow cab scene); during a Classical tour concert; a television performance; a Red Hot concert; and finally another television performance.

The final series of captures that we have in this chronicle come from Vanessa-Mae's appearance in Edinburgh Castle in 1996. Vanessa-Mae played with a Scottish bagpipers ensemble in traditional outfit. Vanessa-Mae sang, so we assume she played I Am A Doun. Vanessa-Mae also did some signing for children who were present in Edinburgh Castle.

All in all, this documentary underlines Vanessa-Mae's great reputation and popularity that she had in Finland at that time. Moreover, the fact that we discovered a documentary about Vanessa-Mae that was made more than 10 years ago only so recently, suggests the idea that there must be many unknown to us material out there. We keep searching for more constantly, and we will report on it as new discoveries have been made.

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The team of the VMSPOS website

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