Ten Years Filming in Valencia

Filmmaker Luisa De La Ville offered a sneak peek and fielded questions about her soon-to-be-released documentary Children of Las Brisas at Upper School assembly. The documentary follows for ten years three young musicians from the impoverished Las Brisas neighborhood in Valencia, Venezuela. Each studied music through the state-sponsored program El Sistema, gaining confidence, community, and a professional level of musicianship. And each faced enormous struggles living through Venezuela’s political turmoil, economic collapse, and humanitarian crises.

“The three represent the possibilities of Venezuelan youth in some way,” said De La Ville noting that one ended up joining protests, was put in jail, and then had to flee the country with help from the Human Rights Foundation; another left the country (one of seven million Venezuelans to flee); and the third joined the army and later became a baker and is now working the land

“When we started filming the film, we thought it would be interesting to see what comes of them in the music world. They had, as you can imagine, great, great dreams,” said De La Ville. “But then all the crises of the country set in, and they started to have some very difficult times. Their life at the beginning wasn’t easy … but things started getting worse,” said De La Ville, who thanked the boys for listening to the children’s stories. “Thank you so much for watching our film. For us, it’s very important that this reality is known to the rest of the world.”