TeledyN

The film shows the gripping way ‘El Sistema’ functions on a daily basis in a typical nucléo: the ‘La Rinconada’ nucléo is located adjoining the barrio of the same name. The area around the nucléo is considered as one of the most dangerous and poorest areas in Caracas. Up to 300 children find their daily destination here.

In the film, three selected young people from the nucléo are accompanied through their daily lives for a whole year. The kids come from different backgrounds, family circumstances and stages of personal development. There are correspondingly few overlaps in their biographies – up until the day when they become part of the ‘system’ and are confronted by their own instruments, as well as the love, persistence and patience of their teachers.

One of Jose Antonio Abreu’s key goals is to broaden young people’s horizons and encourage them to organise their own lives in a meaningful, responsible way. The film documents the personal development of the children and teenagers, few of whom will be crowned by a successful musical career. This is, however, not what the system aspires to.The film explores the central question: what can the system accomplish by connecting young people with classical music, and to what extent can it change their lives?

The film ‘El Sistema’ shows how Abreu’s astonishing ideas have led the way out of the vicious circle of poverty - and how the power of music has been able to change the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people.

"To my mind, our social problems all stem from a sense of exclusion. If you look at the world, you see that exclusion in some form or other is to blame for the explosion of social problems everywhere. So we have to fight to bring as many people as we can, everyone, if possible, into our wonderful world: the world of music, the world of the orchestra, of singing, of art."

Our schools think they have such problems, such woes and worries: they sit in such secure luxury and opulence wracking their brains to invent new ghosts to flee from while remaining clueless to what is happening all around them. Meanwhile, in Venuzuela:

"It was my first day in the chamber orchestra, so I wanted to be early, but I got shot in the leg so I couldn't go ... I started to cry because ... it wasn't the pain in my leg.

 

what really hurt was that I couldn't be in the orchestra that day."