Private Project

I can save her

"I can save her" allocates a mission from the video game The Last Of Us into a voice-over of an experimental short film, merging the narrative with the physical reality of the players’ bodies and the computer generated fragmented scape. The hero, only known by a disembodied voice, encourages character to fulfill the mission by saying "I can save her". The film slows down the game’s quest and brings the players’ bodies into a vacated atmosphere, it washes out saturated colors and a loaded soundtrack. Treating of time, color palette, and materiality of footages forms the basis for a methodology that examines the interactive digital action scenarios. Film questions where in our body are the imprints of digital environments and how they affect our physical needs and the perception of otherness.

The protagonists, who are regular video game players, joined a somatic practice workshop for the film, where the choreography was developed.

  • Petra Mrša
    Director
  • Petra Mrša
    Writer
  • Igor Grubić
    Producer
  • Jakob Vučić-Šenperger
    Key Cast
  • Karlo Čulek
    Key Cast
  • Tomislav Zorjan
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Animation, Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    11 minutes 30 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    January 1, 2024
  • Production Budget:
    25,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Croatia
  • Country of Filming:
    Croatia
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    4K
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Projector festival de videoarte
    Madrid
    Spain
    September 13, 2024
Distribution Information
  • Valentina Lisak
    Distributor
    Country: Croatia
Director Biography - Petra Mrša

Petra Mrša’s lens-based media work arises from initiating and facilitating situations that implement rule-based scenarios that takes art context as a site to broaden and challenge the experience of self. Through thought and physical experiments imposed on herself and/or collaborators, her art process opens up the space for creating new realities in which horizontality, radical hospitality, and the acceptance of the unknown shape interpersonal dynamics. Acquired embodied knowledge celebrates vulnerability and imagination while its documentation offers ground to connect to not just other humans but to other-than-human intelligences as well.

Petra’s interest in broadening the behavior through self-imposed instructions brought her into a three years-long research on the video game medium that additionally served as a site to open a conversation about the mechanisms of socialization in virtual reality. As an artist and educator with a background in social science and art studies, her multidisciplinary and collaborative approach can be seen as a sustainable community research that joins the seek to repair the current damage and transforms the conditions of coexistence.

Petra Mrša holds a master degree in Photography (from Academy of Dramatic Arts), Sociology (from Faculty of Humanities and Social Science), and Psychology (from University Department of Croatian Studies). She was a first generation of the postgraduate art program WHW Akademija initiated by curatorial collective What, How & for Whom/WHW and was nominated for the Radoslav Putar award 2020. She took part in numerous residencies among which are MuseumsQuartier Wien, Cité internationale des arts, CreArt Bluecoat Liverpool's contemporary arts centre. Her work was exhibited at the OSTRALE Biennale (Dresden, Germany), Museum Kunst+Wissen (Switzerland), FOTODOK (The Netherlands), Galerie L'inlassable (France) among many others. Her artworks are in several collections. She works at the Department for photography at the Academy of Applied Arts in Croatia.

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