| Chiquititas | |
|---|---|
| Also known as | Tiny Angels |
| Genre | Telenovela |
| Created by | Cris Morena |
| Starring | See Cast |
| Opening theme | "Rechufas" (season 1) "Chufa Cha" (season 2) "Chufachon" (season 3) "Dame Una Ch" (season 4) "Siempre Chiquititas" (season 5) "Chiquititas 2000" (season 6) "Chiquititas Baila Así" (season 7) "Chiquititas 2006" (season 8) |
| Country of origin | Argentina |
| Language(s) | Spanish |
| No. of seasons | 8 |
| No. of episodes | 1016 (seasons 1–7) 150 (season 8) |
| Production | |
| Running time | 45 minutes |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | Telefe |
| Original run | Seasons 1–7: August 7, 1995 – June 30, 2001 Season 8: April 6, 2006 – December 8, 2006 |
| Chronology | |
| Related shows | Chiquititas, la historia (2001) Chiquititas: Rincón de luz (movie, 2001) Rincón de luz (2003) |
Chiquititas (known in English as Tiny Angels) is a successful children's musical telenovela from Argentina. Created and produced by Cris Morena and her daughter Romina Yan, it aired on Telefé from 1995 until 2001 (Including a movie: "Chiquititas - Rincón de luz").
There were two spin-offs: Rincón de Luz, aired in 2003 on Canal 9 and a 2006 season which aired in Telefe.
Contents |
In its first two seasons, the show followed a more typical telenovela format which changed from the third season onwards.
Soon after Gabriela had a child, her father Ramiro Morán kidnapped his granddaughter because, as a very conservative man, he could not accept the idea that his daughter would be a single mother. So his granddaughter Mili will have a place to live, he creates the orphanage, "Rincón de Luz" (Corner of Light). As the years passed, the girls in the orphanage became a family. In this orphanage full of hopes and dreams, each of the chiquititas, guided by Mili, will live thousands of adventures full of love, friendship and fun.
But not everything will be happiness, Ginette, the orphanage director, will do anything to have the big mansion where the orphanage is localized to herself as a revenge to her boyfriend, the orphanage's owner. The girls' lives will be touched and changed by Belén, a young girl that works on one of the Morán's factories and studies as a social assistant. In the orphanage, Belén will meet Martín, Ramiro's oldest son, an economist that lived in London and is back to Argentina due to work. They'll fall in love with each other but Ramiro will do anything to keep them apart.
After Ramiro's death, his sister Carmen is chosen to be in charge of his fortune. She will do anything she can to keep the secret Ramiro most wanted to protect: Mili's true identity. Meanwhile, is a new beginning in Belén's life who is named the orphanage director. After Martín abandoned her to go back to London, she doesn't think she'll be able to fall in love again until she meets Facundo, the orphanage's doctor.
Carmen finally manages to close down the orphanage. But Belén and the kids receive the help of a mysterious man named Pedro Vega who donates his old mansion to them. In this dangerous and creepy place, they'll meet Elena, the house's governess, a mysterious and mean-spirited women.
In their new neighbourhood, the kids will meet new friends and neighbours. Their life will start to change since they're leaving their childhood behind and are starting to grow. They'll experiment their first kisses and will realize the power of friendship.
The relationship between Belén and Facundo will be torn apart thanks to Andrea, Facundo's ex-girlfriend, and the unscrupulous Alejo Méndez Ayala.
Meanwhile, as Gabriela and Mili become closer each day, Carmen will follow them closely, trying to keep them from knowing the secret and their true ties. But in the end, the truth will finally come to light.
A new phase will start in the orphans' life as they become teenagers.
Belén brings the children a book called "El libro de la vida" (The book of life) where they will write there story for the rest of the season. The orphans have a new neighbor, Manuel, Alejo's twin brother. He and Belén will fall in love, but he is hiding a big secret: he is actually Alejo and is just pretending to be Manuel so he can get a second change to win Belén's heart.
This season the story ends.
A new story begins: María finds "El Libro de la vida" that Belén and the children wrote, and decide to find a place like "Rincón de luz". She meets some new friends and finds a granary with a magic tree that belong to an old guy, named Joaquín. The orphans decide to stay there for a few days, but when Ana, an angel from the sky, comes to save the sick tree, they decide to stay and live there and finally to make the granary their new orphanage.
Ana and Juan died, Pía burned the granary and the children escaped from The Shadow orphanage. Now they have to find a new place to live and María decides its the perfect time to find the original "Rincón de luz". they start a journey after a star that leads them to "Rincón de luz". Belen and the children aren't there anymore. The house was sold to a man called Refael, that everyone thinks he's a ghost. He was involved in an accident and since then he has lived in the dark with a mask on his face.
When time goes by, a woman called Luz arrives in "Rincón de luz" and moves in to live with the orphans. She then finds Refael, falls in love and decides to help him get out from his refuge.
Luz, Refael and Juanita decided to search for Refael's lost son. the orphanage is left without replacement, and when the council discover it, they send a new manager to fix the mess. Lidia, a vicious and cruel woman, gets her chance to take over the orphanage, sell it and get rid of the children by sending them to The Shadow orphanage. Her plans are destroyed by Mili, a girl that previously lived in "Rincón de Luz" and who comes back after her mom died to try to help the children until Luz and Refael are back.
On August 7, 1995, Chiquititas debuted on Telefe. It was aired weekdays at 6pm, the same time-slot as Jugate Conmigo a few years before, and soon became the leader on its time-slot among young viewers.
The show had musical elements and every year it spawned an album with about 10 new songs. The albums became huge successes and were often the best-selling album of the year in the country, with the 1998 CD being one of the top-selling Sony Music Argentina albums ever. All songs were composed by Cris Morena, who was also the mastermind behind the show, with her songwriting partner Carlos Nilson.
The complete cast of the show would also do a huge Broadway style musical at Argentina's biggest theatre, Teatro Gran Rex during the Winter Vacations (which happened in July in Argentina). Each year, a new musical was made with the latest technologies and with budgets of over 1 million dollars. The first live presentation was done in 1996 and, after being a huge success, it became a yearly event, happening from June to September, with daily concerts in the month of July (winter vacations). Chiquititas sold over one million tickets and held the record of being the highest-grossing live franchise ever in Argentina.
Chiquititas was also the first franchise in Argentina's television with the show originating over 400 licensed products, live musicals, CDs and a monthly magazine.
The show reached its peak in 1998, during its fourth season. During this year, the CD and the live musical broke records and the daily show achieved its highest ratings. It was also the end of a cycle, with Romina Yan and her character, Belén, which was the central figure of the show, finally saying goodbye, marrying her love (Alejo played by Facundo Arana) and adopting all children.
In the following year, 1999, Chiquititas got a complete makeover with a new setting and a new cast. The new Chiquititas was also very successful and continued airing until 2001, when it finally ended after seven seasons. Also in 2001, a feature film was released in movie theaters with great success.
Chiquititas finally came to an end in 2001, after disagreements between Cris Morena and Claudio Vilarruel, Telefe's new chairman. In its last season, the show became weekly with a retrospective of Chiquititas previous seasons being aired daily on the original time slot (weekdays at 6 PM).
In 1997, the show was remade by Brazilian-net SBT. The Brazilian version had an all-Brazilian cast but was shot in Buenos Aires at the same studios the original version was made. Soon after its debut, the show became extremely popular spawning hundreds of merchandising and selling over 3 million CDs. Being part of the cast was a dream among many Brazilian kids and in 1999 over 15.000 people in São Paulo, 10,000 in Rio de Janeiro and 6,000 in Recife attended the auditions for the show's third season, breaking the record for the biggest casting ever (as a comparison castings for Ídolos, the Brazilian version of American Idol, are attended by 2,000 people in each state and 4,000 in São Paulo).
In 1998, a remake was done by TV Azteca for Mexico following the same format as the Brazilian version: all Mexican cast shooting in Buenos Aires. It flopped since marketing leader Televisa dominated children's television in the country.
Chiquititas was a phenomenon for Greece. In 2001 the show started airing on a Greek channel Alter with not big popularity. That period, another Argentinian telenovela was airing at ET1, the Cebollitas. That soap was very popular, but after the second season, ET1 bought Chiquititas. ET1 bought Chiquititas 1996-1997 production on 2002-2003. The same year 2002 Alpha TV had bought Chiquititas 1995 version. The watchers were confused. After Chiquititas 1997, in 2004 Et1] played again the Chiquititas 1996. The new Chiquititas never got bought from the Greek television because on 2006 ET1 bought Rebelde Way. The show was extremely popular in Greece. After Rebelde Way ET1 bought Chiquititas 2006. That show was the worst Chiquititas of all for the Greek audience, and the soap opera stopped and Romeo Y Julieta replaced it. Finally, after Rebelde Way nothing else was interesting anymore for the audience, and Romeo y Julieta stopped too. In 2009, Romeo y Julieta started airing in a local TV station of Macedonia in Thessaloniki at ET3.
While the show was a huge success among the young public, it was panned by critics that deemed the program to be over sexualized and of a bad quality. The fact the orphanage was portrayed as a beautiful place full of pretty well-dressed white children was also heavily panned.
In 2001, while leaving Telefe, Cris Morena made it clear she did not want to stop producing Chiquititas but she would not continue the show in another channel because the program rights were owned by Telefé, not her.
In 2003, she did a spin-off, Rincón de Luz, for Canal 9. Rincón de Luz was, of course, the orphanage where the chufos and chufas lived and also the name of the movie released in 2001. Starring the popular singer Soledad Pastorutti and Guido Kaczka (which had acted in the first four seasons as Piojo, Belén's brother), the show could not reach the amount of popularity the first version of the program achieved. However, it was extremely successful in Israel and the complete cast of the show visited Tel Aviv for a series of concerts at Nokia Arena.
In 2006, Cris Morena came back to Telefe which finally gave her the rights over the Chiquititas brand. She decided to produce a new version of the classical show, which would star Jorgelina Aruzzi and Gaston Ricaud. While the new version was a resounding success, of previous seasons or some of her previous projects such as Rebelde Way or Floricienta, it was still highly successful with the live musical at Teatro Gran Rex attracting over 70,000 people, a double-platinum album, a sell-out nationwide tour and over 100 licensed products.
The new version of Chiquititas was remade in Portugal and Romania. It aired in its original version in Brazil and the entire Latin America and Spain on the Disney Channel.
The original show includes twelve soundtracks, which were recorded by the actors of Chiquititas.
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