Happiness Machine

Thanks to his book about an alternative economic model (“Economy for the Common Good”) Austrian political activist and also dancer Christian Felber attracted the attention of media and similarly thinking people. In a unique project called Happiness Machine, ten female directors and ten female composers decided to visualise his ideas by means of a varied palette of genres and types of animated film accompanied by music performed by the Viennese chamber orchestra Klangforum. By animating painting, Elizabeth Hobbs depicts the Grimm story about the greedy fisherman and the effects of his avarice on his surroundings, while Vessela Dantcheva chose the form of abstract film. Joanna Kozuch presents the metaphor of acrobats in a music box, Ena Bradner’s film combines pixilation with live action, and Samantha Moore, known for her documentaries, chose the same approach in her film Bloomers, which she drew on textile and which includes authentic testimonies of entrepreneurs from the textile industry. In Andrea Schneider’s film Generator/Operator, we will see stop-motion animation of various products of nature and Ana Nedeljković’s titular film The Happiness Machine exploring corporate practices stars clay puppets stylised as computer game characters. Using 3D animation and other techniques, Rebecca Blöcher portrays natural and artificial environments, while Measuring the Distance by Susi Jirkuff focuses on marginalised social groups and the peripheries they live in. The closing experiment by Michelle Kranot uses archive footage to turn to the past but talks about a current issue. The common feature of this unique showcase is a distinct musical element. In some cases, the films are accompanied by a melodic score with steady rhythm, in other cases by wilder and almost shredded sound compositions. (Anifilm)