ARGENTINA: Controversial balcony part of 'Evita' filmed from Presidential Palace in Buenos Aires

Record ID: 226940

  • Title: ARGENTINA: Controversial balcony part of 'Evita' filmed from Presidential Palace in Buenos Aires
  • Date: 9th March 1996
  • Summary: BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA (MARCH 9, 1996) (REUTERS) NIGHT-SHOTS WIDE OF PRESIDENTIAL PALACE VARIOUS OF CREW PREPARING AT THE PLAZA DE MAYO BEFORE FILMING THE BALCONY SCENE FANS DANCING CAMERAMAN ON CRANE
  • Embargoed: 24th March 1996 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA
  • Country: Argentina
  • Reuters ID: LVACGL6BDWCQSSJ4KLSRSIGZ4S0G
  • Story Text: Crews working on the movie "Evita" filmed a controversial balcony scene from the presidential palace in Buenos Aires on Saturday (March 9).
    With pop-music diva Madonna in the starring role as Eva Peron, Madonna addressed crowds of extras shouting "viva" and sang the musical's trademark "No llores por me Argentina," or "Don't Cry for Me Argentina".
    Permission for filming the scene had to be granted by Argentine President Carlos Menem.
    The scene stars with actor Jonathan Pryce, who plays General Juan Peron, addressing the crowds.
    In the 1950's, Eva Peron joined her husband on the highly symbolic Casa Rosada balcony and made the historical announcement she would not run for vice president because she is dying of cancer.
    The famed Plaza de Mayo had to undergo reconstruction to revive the era's look.
    The scene took two days to shoot, using more than 3,000 extras and only three cameras.
    Original balcony shots from newsreels were used to make the scene more dramatic.
    Madonna has maintained a low profile during filming in Argentina.
    She was greeted with graffiti reading "Madonna out( Viva Evita" when she arrived in the Argentine capital earlier in February.
    Madonna and film maker Alan Parker have tried to assuage fears the film will tarnish the memory of Evita by suggesting she was once a prostitute and used her sex appeal to manipulate General Juan Peron and the Argentine people.
    Eva Duarte, a poor girl turned radio starlet, was the second wife of populist President Peron, who ruled Argentina from 1946 to 1955 and from 1973 to 1974.
    Evita won the lasting adulation of Argentine workers by taking up the cause of the poor and dispossessed. She died of cancer in 1952, aged just 33.
    Evita's cast and crew are now in Budapest for five weeks of filming.
    Budapest is being used to double for Buenos Aires of the 1930s and 1940s because the present city is considered too modernised.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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