TESTIMONY

A film by Razvan Georgescu

Duration: 90 minutes

15 words

Can death and disability be a motor for creativity? World famous artists deliver intriguing answers.

25 words

Diagnosed with a brain tumour and with three more years to live,  filmmaker Razvan Georgescu takes issue with a tricky social taboo: Death and Creativity.

50 words

TESTIMONY: a film about finding beauty in the face of death, about the healing qualities of art. A roadmovie full of twists and turns. It’s not about watching bodies surrender to disease. It’s a film about life before death. It will make you think and it will make you laugh.

100 words

How does creativity change when death is near? What counts when you must go? Diagnosed with a brain tumour and given three more years to live, the Romanian filmmaker Razvan Georgescu decides to overcome the solemnity of the issue and to explore the realm between Life and Death in order to meet some of its prominent inhabitants: famous artists who have had a traumatic brush with mortality and survived or who only have three more years to live.  Death and illnes - motor for creativity? Is the creative spirit in everything we do the armour against oblivion?

250 words

When the clock starts ticking, what really matters? When death is at hand or the body disabled, what happens to creativity?

Diagnosed with a brain tumour and with three more years to live, the Romanian-born director, Razvan Georgescu (38), takes issue with a tricky social taboo.

The filmmaker sets out to explore the realm between life and death, in search of some of its most famous inhabitants. He meets world famous artists willing to talk candidly about their own terminal illness or their traumatic brush with mortality. 

Can death and disability be a motor for creativity? Can creativity armour us against oblivion or surrender? Razvan Georgescu gets intriguing answers.

The film starts on an operating table in Germany and follows the filmmaker on a very personal journey along Venetian canals, down Broadway, up Sunset Boulevard, coming full circle to Romania. Arresting, unsettling and surprisingly humorous, ‘Testimony’ rides a rollercoaster of emotions, in a series of encounters with artists hoping to stand the test of time: Jörg Immendorff, the painter (+2008), Bill Viola, the videoartist, Katherine Sherwood, the painter, Peter Jecza, the sculptor, William Filnn, the Broadway musical composer.

TESTIMONY is a film about finding beauty in the face of death, about the healing qualities of art. A road movie full of twists and turns that took three years to complete. It’s not about watching the body surrender to disease. It’s a film about life before death and against all odds. It will make you think and it will make you laugh.