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I Would Rather Be a Stone

Ana Hušman
Croatia
23' 48“

Through the voice of Little Jela, the film tells the story of the events that marked a generation and shaped the future of the landscape of Lika, a neglected and sparsely populated region of Croatia. The living conditions impacted on the personal lives of the people who lived there, their solitude, relationships, opportunities, apprehensions and hopes. 

Ana Hušman’s film unfolds like a fairy tale — in which the relationship between the protagonist Jela and the landscape of Lika (part of present-day Croatia) takes on proportions that often border on the surreal: in a vivid sequence that upends the paradigm of anthropomorphism, she imagines her body taking on the characteristics of the waters and rock formations with surrounded her as she grew up. The allegory of Jela, acting almost like an incantation, breathes life into the oft-austere images of nature in I Would Rather Be a Stone, as its animistic device transforms the landscape into a living organism, subject to the same trauma as the human body and spirit, both caught between wars and the unscrupulous exploitation of natural resources. (Flavia Dima)

Screening date and location

September 25th, 8:30 PM, Cinema Elvire Popesco

Tickets

Awards & Festivals

Ana Hušman

Ana Hušman’s practice disassembles the structures and textures of cinematic elements through film, installation, books, sound, image and text. She experiments with animation, documentary and fictional cinematic methods, and the possibilities of recorded voice and its articulation. Her working process questions and plays with the positions of the amateur and the professional subject of performativity, the medium itself, and the structures that dictate and produce patterns of behaviour. She teaches at the Department of Animation and New Media at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, and is a co-founder of the documentary film organisation RESTART. Since 2003, she is a member of Pangolin, an artist-run organisation working in film, visual arts and research practices. Her works have been shown at film festivals and exhibitions worldwide.

  • Technical sheet
  • Production and distribution
  • Director and scriptwriter: Ana Hušman
  • Director of photography: Ivan Slipčević
  • Editing and image post-production: Iva Kraljević
  • Music, sound design, sound mix: Ivan Zelić
  • Sound recording in a querry: Ivna Jurković
  • Sound post-production: Studio Nazor
  • Produced by: Studio Pangolin
  • Producer: Ana Hušman

Screens

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I Would Rather Be a Stone

Ana Hušman | Duration 23' 48“

Through the voice of Little Jela, the film tells the story of the events that marked a generation and shaped the future of the landscape of Lika, a neglected and sparsely populated region of Croatia. The living conditions impacted on the personal lives of the people who lived there, their solitude, relationships, opportunities, apprehensions and hopes.

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