The 1964 Eurovision Song Contest was held on 21 March in the Tivoli Concert Hall in Denmark, following the country’s victory in the 1963 contest in London with the song “Dansevise” by Grethe & Jørgen Ingmann.
Lotte Wæver was the host of the contest and 16 countries competed. Portugal competed for the first time, while Sweden dropped out. Kai Mortensen served as the musical director and conducted the Danish and Portuguese entries. Miroslav Vilček served as the executive supervisor and made sure all of the scores during the votes were accurate.
After the Swiss performance, a man in his 30s approached onstage and held a banner reading “BOYCOTT FRANCO & SALAZAR”, protesting the participations of Spain and Portugal due to being dictatorships at the time. The anonymous man was quickly beaten by a stagehand and escorted offstage, where he was eventually arrested. His group had previously threatened to bomb the venue if the contest organizers let Spain and Portugal participate.
At the close of the voting, Gigliola Cinquetti for Italy emerged as the winner with the song “Non ho l’eta” (I’m not old enough). The song earned a whopping 49 points and Cinquetti was the youngest winner (16 years) until 1986, where Sandra Kim for Belgium won (aged 13).
The organizing national broadcaster, Danmarks Radio (DR) organized the contest. However during this time, DR did not tape any television broadcasts until 1966. This included the 1964 Eurovision Song Contest, which resulted in it being lost media. Fortunately, the majority of the audio is still available (with the ending still unavailable online) and brief clips of footage remain, including a recently discovered clip of the broadcast from Finnish broadcaster YLE.
This video adds video and visuals to simulate what the 1964 Eurovision Song Contest would have looked like. The project contains any remaining media of the contest itself, along with footage of the other participants and other people involved. The video follows the events recorded on the television script from DR in an attempt to make it as faithful and accurate to the original broadcast as possible. It also follows some points an eyewitness recalled when watching the broadcast, mainly what it showed during the stage invasion.
For those curious or concerned about the use of artificial intelligence in the project, it was solely used to restore the video sources used, however everything else was done with human hands and eyes. Not a single second used generative artificial intelligence.
Special thanks to the following people who helped restore the video sources to make it look polished and neat! These guys deserve props too.
@Eurovision-OLD (restored audio and footage)
@visionofeuro (restored footage)
@phalivision (restored the full cut and ending)
The 1964 Eurovision Song Contest was held on 21 March in the Tivoli Concert Hall in Denmark, following the country’s victory in the 1963 contest in London with the song “Dansevise” by Grethe & Jørgen Ingmann.
Lotte Wæver was the host of the contest and 16 countries competed. Portugal competed for the first time, while Sweden dropped out. Kai Mortensen served as the musical director and conducted the Danish and Portuguese entries. Miroslav Vilček served as the executive supervisor and made sure all of the scores during the votes were accurate.
After the Swiss performance, a man in his 30s approached onstage and held a banner reading “BOYCOTT FRANCO & SALAZAR”, protesting the participations of Spain and Portugal due to being dictatorships at the time. The anonymous man was quickly beaten by a stagehand and escorted offstage, where he was eventually arrested. His group had previously threatened to bomb the venue if the contest organizers let Spain and Portugal participate.
At the close of the voting, Gigliola Cinquetti for Italy emerged as the winner with the song “Non ho l’eta” (I’m not old enough). The song earned a whopping 49 points and Cinquetti was the youngest winner (16 years) until 1986, where Sandra Kim for Belgium won (aged 13).
The organizing national broadcaster, Danmarks Radio (DR) organized the contest. However during this time, DR did not tape any television broadcasts until 1966. This included the 1964 Eurovision Song Contest, which resulted in it being lost media. Fortunately, the majority of the audio is still available (with the ending still unavailable online) and brief clips of footage remain, including a recently discovered clip of the broadcast from Finnish broadcaster YLE.
This video adds video and visuals to simulate what the 1964 Eurovision Song Contest would have looked like. The project contains any remaining media of the contest itself, along with footage of the other participants and other people involved. The video follows the events recorded on the television script from DR in an attempt to make it as faithful and accurate to the original broadcast as possible. It also follows some points an eyewitness recalled when watching the broadcast, mainly what it showed during the stage invasion.
For those curious or concerned about the use of artificial intelligence in the project, it was solely used to restore the video sources used, however everything else was done with human hands and eyes. Not a single second used generative artificial intelligence.
Special thanks to the following people who helped restore the video sources to make it look polished and neat! These guys deserve props too.
@Eurovision-OLD (restored audio and footage)
@visionofeuro (restored footage)
@phalivision (restored the full cut and ending)
6:44 🇱🇺 Hugues Aufray — "Dès que le printemps revient"
10:34 🇳🇱 Anneke Grönloh — "Jij bent mijn leven"
14:00 🇳🇴 Arne Bendiksen — "Spiral"
17:19 🇩🇰 Bjørn Tidmand — "Sangen om dig"
21:22 🇫🇮 Lasse Mårtenson — "Laiskotellen"
24:31 🇦🇹 Udo Jürgens — "Warum nur, warum?"
28:54 🇫🇷 Rachel — "Le Chant de Mallory"
31:56 🇬🇧 Matt Monro — "I love the little things" 🥈
35:10 🇩🇪 Nora Nova — "Man gewöhnt sich so schnell an das Schöne"
38:55 🇲🇨 Romuald — "Où sont-elles passées?" 🥉
42:05 🇵🇹 António Calvário — "Oração"
45:32 🇮🇹 Gigliola Cinquetti — "Non ho l'eta 🏆
49:54 🇸🇮* Sabahudin Kurt — "Život je sklopio krug"
53:55 🇨🇭 Anita Traversi — "I miei pensieri"
57:19 📜 Stage invasion as seen onscreen according to a television viewer
58:17 🇧🇪 Robert Cogoi — "Près de ma rivière"
1:02:20 🇪🇸 Nelly with Tim & Tony — "Caracola"
1:06:40 🩰 Ballet-Harlequinade** dancing to Columbine porka mazurka and Champagnegaloppen
1:14:44 📊 Results
1:29:13 🏆 Winner announcement
1:31:05 🇮🇹 Gigliola Cinquetti — "Non ho l'eta" (reprise)
NOTES:
* Yugoslavia was represented by the Slovenian federal unit, as they called from Ljubljana to cast their votes.
** There is no footage of Ballet-Harlequinade, as the specific members only grouped up for the contest. The footage used features two ballet dances featuring Solveig Østergaard, one of the members. The first dance is of Columbine porka mazurka, while the other is an attempt to match the dance with Champagnegaloppen.
- For the songs from the Netherlands, Norway (partly), Denmark, Germany, Switzerland (partly), and Spain, I could not find any (complete) footage of them that fit my preferences, so their lips do not (partly) match with the song.
Disclaimer: For those curious or concerned about the use of AI in this project, AI was solely used to restore the video sources to 50fps and make them look polished (which was controlled manually). No generative AI will ever be used in my projects.