🔴 1964 Eurovision Song Contest from Copenhagen/Denmark Reconstruction with Photos and Film Footage

Date: 21 March 1964 - Host Venue: Tivolis Koncertsal, Copenhagen, Denmark
Presenter: Lotte Wæver - Musical director: Kai Mortensen
Directed by Poul Leth Sørensen - Executive supervisor: Miroslav Vilček
Host broadcaster: Danmarks Radio (DR) - Opening act: Tivoli Youth Guard
Interval act: Ballet-HarlequinadeShow more

The Eurovision Song Contest 1964 was the 9th edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Copenhagen, Denmark, following the country's victory at the 1963 contest with the song "Dansevise" by Grethe & Jørgen Ingmann. Organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster Danmarks Radio (DR), the contest was held at Tivolis Koncertsal on 21 March 1964, and was hosted by Danish TV speaker Lotte Wæver.

Sixteen countries participated in the contest. Portugal made its debut this year, while Sweden decided not to enter.
The winner of the contest was Italy with the song "Non ho l'età", performed by Gigliola Cinquetti, written by Nicola Salerno and composed by Mario Panzeri. At the age of 16 years and 92 days, Gigliola Cinquetti became the youngest winner of the contest yet; a record she held until 1986. The entry had one of the widest margins of victory ever witnessed in the competition. It garnered almost three times as many points as the second-placed song.
As with the 1956 contest, no complete video recording of the actual contest is known to have survived; however, unlike the 1956 contest (where the interval act is mostly missing), a complete audio recording does exist in the form of the DR radio broadcast. Some clips of the contest have survived, including part of the opening ceremonies, including some of presenter Lotte Wæver's welcoming remarks, as well as the majority of the repeat performance of "Non ho l'età" from the end of the broadcast. For some time, there was a rumour that a copy of the entire contest existed in the French television archives. In 2021, INA confirmed to Wiwibloggs that the French television archives do not possess a copy of the contest.

A persistent myth, even repeated on the official Eurovision site, is that the tape was destroyed in a fire in the 1970s. More recent interviews with DR, however, state that the broadcast was never recorded in the first place, allegedly due to no tape machines being available at the studio at the time. The audio of the entire show, however, is still available online, and fan reconstructions using available clips, press photos and other sources have been made.

Our YouTube channel ESCstuff released a full reconstruction of the contest in December 2020, using footage recovered from Germany. It was the second reconstruction using the German footage uploaded on Youtube.

In December 2021, after purchasing it from the Finnish broadcaster Yle's archives, Reddit user DYLCWS uploaded a 3-minute clip of the televised broadcast of the contest, including Gigliola Cinquetti being presented as the winner, the presenter Lotte Wæver introducing the award presenter Svend Pedersen, a shot of the medal, a shot of the audience, and a portion of the winning reprise of "Non ho l'età" at a front facing angle unlike most of the pre-existing footage. At the end of July 2022, new photos from the contest were found in the DR's archives. A few weeks later, YouTube user ESC Kazakhstan started uploading reconstructions of the contestants' performances using the found photos.

The purpose of this video is to replicate the ideal look of the televised contest while including the new footage found under YLE archives and new footage of participants after the original reconstruction was released. Credits to LewisTheThing for putting it all together in so many hours of hard work. Thank you for watching, and enjoy the show.

Participants and results:

R/O Country Artist Song Language Points Place
1 Luxembourg Hugues Aufray "Dès que le printemps revient" French 14 4=
2 Netherlands Anneke Grönloh "Jij bent mijn leven" Dutch 2 10=
3 Norway Arne Bendiksen "Spiral" Norwegian 6 8
4 Denmark Bjørn Tidmand "Sangen om dig" Danish 4 9
5 Finland Lasse Mårtenson "Laiskotellen" Finnish 9 7
6 Austria Udo Jürgens "Warum nur, warum?" German 11 6
7 France Rachel "Le Chant de Mallory" French 14 4=
8 United Kingdom Matt Monro "I Love the Little Things" English 17 2
9 Germany Nora Nova "Man gewöhnt sich so schnell an das Schöne" German 0 13=
10 Monaco Romuald "Où sont-elles passées" French 15 3
11 Portugal António Calvário "Oração" Portuguese 0 13=
12 Italy Gigliola Cinquetti "Non ho l'età" Italian 49 1
13 Yugoslavia Sabahudin Kurt "Život je sklopio krug" (Живот је склопио круг) Serbo-Croatian 0 13=
14 Switzerland Anita Traversi "I miei pensieri" Italian 0 13=
15 Belgium Robert Cogoi "Près de ma rivière" French 2 10=
16 Spain Tim, Nelly and Tony "Caracola" Spanish 1 12