I don’t want to die without seeing the color of spring (2015)

a feature documentary film by Patricia Bateira

In 2014, Bateira was the artist invited to develop all sound and visual work for the international festival Voicing Resistance, which took place in Studio Я, at Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin. This documentary is the result of the artistic experience. 
© 2015, Patrícia Bateira

Film has been an impotent witness of its time. Jean-Luc Godard argues that cinema (as ‘film-factory’) produces a rain full of stories filled with horror images, because we need to dream. That is the paradox. In cinema, like in literature, theatre (and in politics too), we find horror effects transform what is familiar in strange or what is friendly in hostile. Cinema has to fulfill its mnemonic duty. Without forgetting the past, it can provide tools against alienation and the forgetfulness of the present, tools that can bring us close to nature and humanity.

The voice of this documentary resonates the spirit of the festival illustrating a world in difficulty, where the search for freedom and democracy find no final chapter. On the day that the truth is equal to a lie, history will be a five act epic record of a sordid horror story with an inevitable fierce and savagely brutal end. This documentary will remain available for present and future generations so that we are able to offer, not archives fed by propaganda, but the side of the theatre, of the performances, of the artists creating meaning, of our infinite capacity to hope and love.

“I don’t want to die without seeing the color of spring” turns our own history into collective memory, converting into fiction an historical document of these controversial times; so that the truth that was presented on Studio Я’s stage in 2014, and the justice we are all craving for, can prevail, even on doomsday.