– 2024 | 23’ 48’’ | stereo | HD, 1920 x 1080

The film was shot on location in Lika, a neglected and sparsely populated region of Croatia. It was heavily affected during World War II. The population was poor and the land was barren. Potatoes were the main food. Children went to school, worked the fields and took care of the livestock. Most of the generation born in the 1940s moved to cities or abroad. One of the microlocations is Kosinj Valley where, in 2021, the construction of a reservoir, a hydroelectric power plant, and three dams on the Lika River will completely submerge two still populated villages. To create the lake, 75 thousand tons of cement will be injected into the landscape. Through observing the landscape and models of cohabitation between living and non-living entities, I examine the ways in which memories are built, how narratives are created and how they disappear, how new elements are implemented both in memory and in the landscape. I explore lichen and their immobility, time and perseverance, quarries as sources, processes of fragmentation, breaking down and transformation as open possibilities applicable to film techniques. I perceive the time of the forest, the quarries, and lichen as a slow shift, an invisible movement in the landscape, like the movement of living beings and microorganisms.

I Would Rather Be a Stone a story of the events which marked a generation and shaped the future of the landscape through the protagonist Little Jela.