Fifty years ago, exercising the latest technology of the portable film-camera, anthropologist and filmmaker, Jean Rouch, and sociologist, Edgar Morin took to the streets of Paris to ask the city’s people, Are you Happy? in their short video Chronicle of a Summer (watch below). Now half a century later with the assistance of more advanced and globalised technology, filmmakers from around the world pose the same, and surprisingly not-so-simple question, in taking part of the experimental documentary series that is The ARE YOU HAPPY? Project. This series, in connecting different people from literally all over the globe is a prime example of what is known as cultural intertextuality.

The project’s website acts as a doorway into a ‘docuverse’ of sorts, as “it is the individual reader’s and writer’s means of participating in – of being linked to – the world…” (Landow 2006).  Hypertexts and Hypermedia is transforming the way in which we communicate and tell stories to one another, and is particularly intriguing as at is a continuous flow that is always linking all sorts people together. The ARE YOU HAPPY? Project, primarily so, as it is an international platform where both regular people, filmmakers and sociologists are coming together to take a deeper look into the borderless concept of happiness. Check out the videos below for a taste, or head to The ARE YOU HAPPY? Project website for more.

(source: youtube) 

(source: Are You Happy?, Vimeo)