Marillion's Brave (Rel. 1994)

Brave is an extended length music video, based upon an album by Marillion. The storyline in album itself springs from a real-life incident on the Severn Bridge that connects England and Wales. On February 7th 1994, a girl was found wandering near the said bridge. She was unable to speak, so the authorities send out a bulletin in hopes of locating her family/friends, and to ultimate identify her. Marillion vocalist Steve Hogarth was impressed by the event and created a fictional story about how the girl got to the bridge in the first place. The album was also commisioned to be brougth on screen in the vein of Pink Floyd's The Wall. Enter Richard Stanley.

As in the album, the girl (played by Josie Ayers) goes through Hell. Drug abuse, rape by her father, suicide attempt. Despite therapy sessions etc., the only real outlet she has is painting murals. The film could've been a beaut, but it was taken by the away from Stanley prior to the release.

"I've pretty much disowned [Brave]. They re-edited the hell out of it again. For the wrong reasons. Again. For stupid reasons, not the reasons you'd expect. They stretched the footage way too thin. They basically said 'we got four minutes of footage here. Let's try to stretch this out and make it look like a movie.' It was an abuse of the material. It's stretched beyond it's breaking point."
[Richard Stanley in Sex & Guts Magazine #3.]

In 2004, Brave was released on Multi-region DVD. More about it on Marillion's official site.

Related reading:

One of the girl's works carries great resemblance to Edvard Munch's famed The Scream. Here's an article about it.