The Theory of Happiness

Original title The Theory of Happiness

In a remote village outside the city of Khiarkov, Ukraine, a small but passionate group of people are fighting an ideological war. Their weapons are hoes and shovels, pickaxes and spades turned against the soil. Their rhetoric is political poetry meant to enlighten the masses, their goal universal happiness. Started in the late 1980s under the leadership of a now deceased guru, group members were recruited as teens and had to renounce alcohol, drugs and sexual intimacy. Recruits work on a farm, tending after cows, horses and pigs. They call themselves “PORTOS,” the Poetical Association for the Development of a Theory of Universal Happiness.
In this film, the filmmaker, whose presence is ubiquitous on screen, reflects on what it means to become a participant in the group, allowing the main conflicts of the narrative to run through him. In the process, he encounters loneliness, estrangement, grief and loss, weaving together a complex story that explores the themes of power, subordination, hardship and fulfilment.

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Author/s Gregory Gan

Gregory Gan was born in the former Soviet Union. At a young age he moved to France and then to Canada, where he spent his adult life. His studies in anthropology and filmmaking congealed in his graduate work that saw him return to Russia to examine the life histories of women of the Russian intelligentsia, resulting in the film Turning Back the Waves (2010). Gregory’s subsequent work and his participation in SoundImageCulture led to the production of The Theory of Happiness (2014). Currently, Gregory is completing his PhD, having developed a multimedia ethnographic project on the Russian diaspora. He now lives in Berlin.

Research Gregory Gan
Photography Gregory Gan
Sound Konrad Skreta
Editing Terezia Mikulasova