Piper Perabo (top center) with Manolo Cardona (top left) pose for a photograph with local girls before an screening of “Covert Affairs.
When Piper Perabo landed in Medellín, Colombia, in March, to film the fourth season of the C.I.A. drama “Covert Affairs,” which premieres tonight on USA, she had never been to South America before and was surprised to be traveling to a city she knew only as the hometown of Pablo Escobar.
But she was instantly impressed by Medellín, which has transformed itself from a battleground for warring drug cartels into a model of 21st-century urban planning. “The city itself is shaped like a bowl,” Perabo explained. “The downtown is on the flat part at the bottom, and then on the steep sides on the mountain rim are all what’s called the communas. Those are sort of ghettos or favelas, built in pretty steep tiers up the side of the mountain and numbered into districts.” One of Medellín’s recent innovations: a government-built escalator that safely carries passengers 1,300 feet from the communas down into the city.
It was Holy Week in the heavily Catholic city when Perabo and her crew were there filming, so all the residents of Communa 8 were off work and out of school. “They brought us up and let us scout, and they were incredibly passionate about filmmaking,” she said. Even teenagers got involved, corralling the little ones throughout the day and directing traffic around the set. Grateful for the help and hospitality, Perabo worked with the nonprofit Wandering Cinema to set up a special outdoor advance screening of the season premiere for residents of the neighborhood. In this slideshow, she remembers that last Saturday in June, which she describes as an “all-night party” that everyone came to.
New York Times
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