Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Fifteen Feet Of Pure White Snow

What this video is

Released in May 2001, this video arrived at an inflection point in post-Cold War cultural geography, filming in a former Communist Party headquarters in Kazakhstan — a country whose Soviet identity dissolved only a decade prior in 1991. The choice of venue transforms a once-oppressive administrative space into a site of ironic liberation and communal joy, directly mirroring the song's lyrical preoccupation with…

Why it matters

Represents a defining artifact of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' mature baroque period, bridging 1990s gothic rock austerity and a more expansive, communally celebratory aesthetic. Hillcoat's direction employs the language of the 'event video' — associating the band with a recognisable milieu of…

The director

John Hillcoat (born 14 August 1961, Queensland, Australia) is an Australian film director, screenwriter, and music video director. He graduated from Melbourne's Swinburne Film School and began collaborating with Nick Cave as early as 1981 on The Birthday…