Sandra — Little girl

JUL 01 1986 · 12:00

Sandra — Little girl (1986) Director: Mike Stiebel Era: Mid-Decade Eurosynth Bloom (1986) - Peak era of European synth-pop crossover, where German producers dominated continental charts with icy, atmospheric balladry and cinematic location shoots. High curatorial value as a well-preserved, IMDB-catalogued 1986 music video representing the convergence of European synth-pop production, gothic narrative ambition, and prestige on-location cinematography. The Venice setting, carnival mask imagery, and ghost-story structure distinguish it as an outlier within the Sandra catalogue and a culturally resonant artefact of mid-decade Euro-pop. Its documented inclusion in multiple official compilation releases (1987, 1992, 2003) confirms sustained institutional recognition within Sandra's discography. Context: Released on 24 February 1986 as the third and final single from Sandra's debut album The Long Play, 'Little Girl' occupies a distinctive niche in mid-80s Euro-pop: a synth-ballad with gothic overtones at a moment when the genre was dominated by uptempo dancefloor productions. Produced by Michael Cretu — who would later architect the Enigma project — the track's ambient synth pads and reverb-drenched percussion reflect the era's growing appetite for atmospheric, cinematic pop. The Venice shoot aligns the video with a broader European tendency to use Old World heritage locations as uncanny backdrops, lending the production a prestige and melancholy uncommon in contemporaneous pop video aesthetics. The Venetian carnival mask iconography taps into deep European folk-horror tradition, foreshadowing the arthouse sensibility that would define late-80s European pop visuals. Director notes: Filmed on location in Venice, Italy in early 1986. The video follows a narrative structure in which Sandra visits a columbarium, discovers a plaque for Angela Venezia (died 1797), and is subsequently haunted by the girl's ghost through the streets, canals, restaurants, and antique shops of Venice. The climax features a courtyard scene in which Sandra is surrounded by figures wearing Venetian carnival masks, before she flees and encounters the ghost one final time. The clip was later included in Sandra's VHS compilations Ten on One (The Singles) (1987) and 18 Greatest Hits (1992), as well as the 2003 DVD The Complete History.