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Product Description:
The winner of the audience award at the Miami International Film Festival, To Play and To Fight presents the captivating story of the Venezuelan Youth Orchestra System - an incredible network of hundreds of orchestras formed within most of Venezuelas towns and villages.
Once a modest program designed to expose rural children to the wonders of music, the system has become one of the most important and beautiful music phenomena in modern history. To Play and To Fight presents interviews and performances by many of the worlds most renowned musicians including the great tenor Placido Domingo, Claudio Abbado, Sir Simon Rattle, Guiseppe Sinopoli, and Eduardo Mata, as they reflect on the impact of such a far-reaching social project.
The documentary also presents the inspirational stories of world class musicians who have been trained by the Venezuelan system, including The Berlin Philharmonics youngest player Edicson Ruiz and world class conductor Gustavo Dudamel.
An unforgettable documentary - 
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Tocar y Luchar Review
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The Youth Orchestra System links hundreds of orchestras in most of Venezuela's towns and villages. This "Systeme" originated thirty years ago as an effort to bring the magic of music to rural villages. Today it has grown into an exemplary and miraculously transformative social phenomenon. The award-winning documentary To Play and To Fight (Tocar y Luchar) conveys the personal, inspirational stories of world class musicians trained through this program. This moving film features the Berlin Philharmonic's youngest player, Edicson Ruiz, world renowned conductor Gustavo Dudamel, and interviews with many of the world's most celebrated musicians: Claudio Abbado, Placido Domingo, Eduardo Mata, Sir Simon Rattle and Guiseppe Sinopoli. To Play and To Fight is an indelible story of compassionate determination, one without modern parallel, one that might just change your own life by impelling you to the same purpose.
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EXCELLENT!!! -
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Tocar y Luchar Review
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Un documental muy interesante de un valor que se esta olvidando, la musica clasica. Llore en muchas partes me encanto... excelente documental!!!
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This is a truly inspiring documentary... -
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Tocar y Luchar Review
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... for musicians and non-musicians alike. For those who don't know, "Tocar y Luchar" ("To Play and to Fight") is a documentary about the Youth Orchestra system in a seemly obscure nation of Venezuela, which has become an international phenomenon in the world of music. Non-musicians must watch to witness how music means so much to this third-world country or any part of the world, while musicians might as well put into practice whatever message this film offers. For instance, what is an orchestra? The answer can be found here in this documentary.
On a personal level, the epilogue couldn't have been better, as one will see Sir Simon Rattle conducting an overwhelming conclusion to Gustav Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony. That part of the film always put me to tears! And who shouldn't be?
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Fascinating topic, frustrating film - 
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Tocar y Luchar Review
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This documentary feature film explores the rich, vibrant classical music scene in Venezuela -- in specific, a thirty-year long commitment to a far-reaching and aggressively idealistic government sponsored program that brings high-level musical training to hundreds of thousands of student across the South American nation. World-class performers and conductors are interviewed about the program, and all are agog -- even Europe has nothing like it, and film clips of one child prodigy after another will make your jaw drop as well.
That's the good part. The bad part about this film is that the viewer has to work very, very hard to extract this information from the film. The narrative structure is exceedingly poor, and even if you are able to successfully infer what is being told, there are still great gaps in the story that are never fully resolved.
The music program is amazing, an unqualified success, a model for the world, a transformative spiritual and aesthetic experience. At least that's what we are told, over and over again, by numerous interviewees. But the exact parameters of the program are poorly defined, as is its history. A group of musicians who were in the first wave of the program speak warmly about its origins, with rehearsals held in parking lots, and about the visionary power of the program's architect. What is less clear is when the transition was made from these humble beginnings to the vast, lavish scope of the program in the present day.
How is the program funded? How is it administered? Are there students who aren't able to get in, and how are the quarter million students who are in it selected? Why do most of the students seem to be relatively light-skinned? (Venezeula's population is dominated by mestizos and Europeans, but there is a sizable Afro-Venezuelan population, but not many of these kids seem to make it into this film...) There is a dismaying lack of context to this film, not even a cursory attempt to explain what is unique about Venezeula -- its history, its culture, the oil wealth and the economy that allows it to support such a massive nationwide arts program, or how the oil crash of the '80s or the rise of socialist-leaning president Hugo Chavez may have influenced this program. Nothing. Nada. No context, only glowing, breathless praise. I mean, I think the music program sounds fantastic, and I understand why people with a commitment to arts and humanities would be thrilled by the promise shown in this film... I just wish the filmmakers could have explained the topic better, so that we really knew what they were talking about. (Joe Sixpack, Slipcue film reviews)
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Tocar YLuchar -
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Tocar y Luchar Review
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This DVD is one of the most inspiring videos I have ever seen. It documents thirty years of an unusual country-wide music education program in Venezuela that has produced a population that is music literate. Nearly every city has an orchestra, band, chorus. The education is available to everyone and has been particularly valuable to many poor inner city children.
The founder of the program speaks on the video, and we get to see many children of all ages performing and even conducting. The 'child' conductor would be Gustavo Dudamel, the young conductor who will take over the L.A. Philharmonic next year. See it- you'll love it.
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