In 1960, the career of Alfred Hitchcock was at stake.

Pressed by the critics, moral taboos, budget limitations, and the growing disaffection of the younger generations to the Classic Hollywood formula, he betted his prestige, and his own patrimony, in a risky and risqué project that was to become one of his most acclaimed works; the psychological horror thriller Psycho.

Hitchcock tacked the film on a tight production budget and schedule, completing the shooting with a television crew in only five weeks. But the movie seemed somehow flat and lifeless, and he even considered cutting it down to an hour and releasing it as a part of his long running television series. When composer Bernard Herrmann viewed the rough edit of the film, he asked Hitch to entrust it to him while the director went away on vacation. Hitchcock agreed asking only one favor of Herrmann, that he was not to score the shower sequence, as the murder must be illustrated only by the bare sound of the knife and the running shower. When Hitchcock returned from vacation he found the picture completed, the music recorded… and the shower sequence scored. Herrmann had, once again, ignored Hitchcock’s instructions risking the loss of the director’s legendary temper. When Hitchcock saw the completed scenes with Herrmann’s shrieking violins tearing like knives at Janet Leigh’s vulnerable torso, he gave his nod of approval. “But Hitch,” Herrmann asked. “I thought you didn’t want any music during the shower sequence?” To which Hitchcock unexpectedly conceded “Improper suggestion, my boy, improper suggestion.”

The success of Psycho marked the highest point of their collaboration, but it was not without a toll. Herrmann daring insolence was too much for an increasingly reluctant to share the spotlight Hitchcock. A subtle, nearly unnoticeable chasm was beginning to develop between the two men, foretelling the end of one of the most legendary partnerships in film history; Herrmann and Hitchcock. Hitchcock, and Herrmann.

Approaching Venezuela, its people, and their mesmerising music.

In 1975, musician (and economist) José Antonio Abreu developed a state-funded program to bring free classical music education, and instruments, to children across his country. He called it “the System”, “el sistema”. Across 45 years, over 900000 young people have benefited from a program that has revolutionised the access to music education across the country, and that has been admired, studied and adapted, across the globe. 

Nonetheless, great ideas need great support, and it rarely comes for free. Questions on power, control, identity, nationalism have challenged a top-down program that managed to survived 7 different governments accommodating to the prevailing political discourse of their time. Is “el sistema” an antidote to poverty or a tool to consolidate power? Can culture and access to education be truly independent if they depend on state support?

"El sistema" is, no doubt, a story of success, with more lights than shadows, from a fascinating country that illustrates success and failure as no other. The richest in resources, and the poorest in their distribution, a country in which petrol is cheaper than water, with a broken society united only in their pride for their homeland. A country of talent, of nature, of beauty, but, above all, of music. The country of Simón Díaz, Gustavo Dudamel, Serenata Guayanesa or Juan Vicente Torrealba. Venezuela.