Watch the film on Vimeo!
In a remote village outside the city of Khiarkov, Ukraine, a small but passionate group of people are fighting an ideological war. Their weapons? Hoes and shovels, pickaxes and spades turned towards the soil. Their rhetoric? Political poetry meant to enlighten the masses. Their goal? Universal happiness. Began in the late 1980s under the leadership of a now deceased guru of the movement, Yuri Davidov, group members were recruited as teens, and had to renounce alcohol, drugs and sexual intimacy. The farm on which they now live and work, holds a thirty-head cow herd, two horses and a number of pigs. Recruits begin working 16-hour days and write political poetry in their spare time. They call themselves “PORTOS,” which stands for a “Poetical Association for the Development of A Theory of Universal Happiness.” Debilitated structures and broken farm implements are all given names; the farm is given the name SPARTA, the latrines are called ‘Stalin’ and ‘Yeltsin.‘ Each member is ranked on a “Pyramid of Happiness.” Those who are deemed to be less than 50% happy, are considered non-human. The goal of the organization is to achieve eternal happiness, and enter into eternity.
The filmmaker explores what it means to become a participant, gaining acceptance and making friends, and coming to terms with loneliness and loss. In the process, he meets a number of characters whose tell their story: an overweight young woman vying for acceptance from the leaders, who becomes his confidante, the leader of the sect, who attempts to exercise her authority, the shepherd, the milklady, the farmhand. Together, they weave a complex story that explores the themes of power and subordination, suffering and happiness.
CREW
Director: Gregory Gan
Cinematography: Gregory Gan
Editing: Gregory Gan, Terezia Mikulasova
Production: Gregory Gan
Gregory Gan Filmography
2023 Empathy for Concrete Things. An animated documentary on the history of panel-block art and architecture.
2017 Still Life with a Suitcase. Interactive installation on transnational Russian migration. Variable duration. World premiere: Digital Anthropologies Film Festival, Paris, France.
2015 Phantom Couriers: Ghost in the Machine. 7 minutes. Short film on bicycle messengers in Vancouver, Canada. World premiere: Filmed by Bike. Portland, United States.
2014 The Theory of Happiness. 82 minutes. Ethnographic film on a radical Ukrainian mathematical sect. World premiere: Hot Docs International Film Festival, Toronto, Canada.
2008 Turning Back the Waves. 96 minutes. Ethnographic film on Soviet women’s life histories. Library and Archives Canada/Bibliothèque et Archives Canada.
2011 Make a Wise Wish Now. 33 minutes. Ethnographic film on magic ritual and performance.
Gregory Gan was born in Moscow, in the former Soviet Union, at the beginning of the perestroika era. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he emigrated with his mother, first to France, and then to Canada, where he spent his young adult life. The experience of migration early in his life inspired Gregory to study anthropology, and subsequently, film, after returning from extensive work and travel in Latin America.
Interest in both anthropology and film congealed in his graduate work, when he began to research the life histories of women of the Russian intelligentsia. In the resulting film, “Turning Back the Waves,” (2010) Gregory interviews Gulag survivors and Soviet dissidents, architects and university professors, to understand the way elderly women perceive their past. Gregory’s subsequent work brought him to SoundImageCulture, a master class in Belgium hosted by artistsanthropologists. That experience inspired the present film, “Theory of Happiness,” (2014) especially in the early development stages of the project. Currently, Gregory is continuing his studies as a PhD student in visual anthropology, developing an ethnographic project on the Russian diaspora, which will also be the focus of his next feature-length film, as a way to understand both a tumultuous period in present-day Russia, and his own displacements and cross-cultural transitions.
When people watch “The Theory of Happiness” for the first time, they are astonished at the overwhelming, claustrophobic interior spaces of the sect, adorned by layers of political slogans on the walls and ceilings. Consider the thought that having control over an image is a political act. In this light, we must ask what this act means, and whether PORTOS has power over their images, or are overpowered by them. To understand the ideology of the sect, we must first understand their aesthetic. I have made a film, which in light of these remarks, I also hope will be understood as a political film. Its aesthetic, highlights the clashing dialogue with the sect, which is a deeply personal negotiation with participants about the limits of our mutual comfort . How can we approach interlocutors with empathy, when our aspirations, dreams and life philosophies are fundamentally contradictory?
Acknowledging this paradox, I explore the relations of power of image product ion through the inverted gaze of the camera lens. The film finds no easy answers to the complex scenario that unfolds. But it does allow to make a number of interpretations about the power of images: why, for example, do sect members choose to borrow the symbols of the former Soviet Union, as if to recreate the fantasy of socialist utopia on a small scale? Does the sensory overload contribute to the way new participants to the sect undergo psychological conditioning? In the early 1990s, it was common for people trying to make sense of the collapse of the Soviet Union to send pages and pages of their diaries to newspapers in the hope of getting them published. Should we consider the sect’s graphomaniacal tendencies as a coping mechanism for dealing with an already-complicated, overlydense and fragile world?
THE PROTAGONISTS
TAMARA KOSTIUK has been in charge of upholding the ideology of the PORTOS sect, ever since the founder and guru of the organization, YURA DAVIDOV died 8 months prior. She is in grief over his death, but finds solace in conversations with the filmmaker, GREGORY GAN whom she takes as a trainee of the rules and laws of the sect. As a disciplinarian, she can be brash, cynical and even cruel, especially to workers on the farm, whom she considers non-humans.
SASHA KUROPATKINA is the newest member of the organization, having arrived to PORTOS to work as a milk lady 8 months prior. Because she is still learning the rigid rules of the sect, PORTOS members often make fun of her, especially for her demeanor and weight. She idolizes her instructor, ANDREI PETROV. However, during the making of the film, GREGORY GAN becomes her confidante, and she, in turn, shares her anxieties, concerns and aspirations with him.
ANDREI PETROV is the current supervisor of the farm, SPARTA, one of PORTOS’ main endeavours. He works tirelessly, often sleeping as little as 3-4 hours a night. He is soft-spoken and has a monotonous voice, but he is also rigidly ideological. He struggles to teach SASHA proper codes of behaviour in PORTOS, and at the same time, he gets berated by TAMARA for not keeping watch over his student. He is worn out, both physically and emotionally.
YULIA PRIVEDENNAYA is a PORTOS member in Moscow. Following in the footsteps of several other PORTOS members, she is being persecuted for forming an illegal, armed organization, and for violating minors. She is a soft-spoken and articulate speaker, choosing her words carefully. She often communicates with TAMARA via Skype, as the Moscow wing of the organization reports daily to Ukraine. During production, YULIA’s verdict was announced in court.
ALEKSANDR NOVODATSKY is one of several workers hired to the organization as a farm hand. He gathers hay, while recounting his glory days as a biker, a drummer in a punk band and, more tacitly, as a soldier in the Chechen and Afghan Wars. ALEKSANDR bypasses the sect’s various prohibitions and taboos. He is there to earn money to send to his ailing mother. In a bizarre twist of fate, seconds will determine whether he will live or die.
GREGORY GAN, the director of the film, is also a participant as he uncovers his own role in the PORTOS sect. He finds himself in an awkward position as a recruit, unwilling to accept certain rules of conduct, and yet, his rebellion does not necessarily yield wanted results. However, he gets much more than he bargained for, as he inadvertently becomes a participant in the unfolding tragic drama that unfolds nearing the end of his stay and production.
PRESSE
“Faces of Ukraine, on the Eve of Tumult.” The New York Times. Tom Roston. April 18, 2014
“Hot Docs 2014: The Theory of Happiness Review.” That Shelf. Peter Counter. April 21, 2014
“Dear Cattle Background Artists.” Di Golding. May 04, 2014
“Five piping-hot docs to catch at Hot Docs 2014” Toronto Life. April 21, 2014
A Dog’s Happiness (in Russian). Gregory Gan. Smena [“Change”], No. 11, November 2010
FESTIVALS & SCREENINGS
Hot Docs International Film Festival (World Premiere). Nominated Best Canadian Documentary. Toronto, Canada. April 26, 2014.
Dum Národnostníh Menšin (House of Minorities). Prague, Czech Republic. September 30, 2015.
PANDA Theater. Berlin, Germany. October 7, 2015
Beursschowburg. Brussels, Belgium. December 10, 2015.
Days of Ethnographic Film. Ljubljana, Slovenia. March 8, 2019
Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität. Münster, Germany. April 11, 2019.
Viscult-NAFA Ethnographic Documentary Film Festival. Joensuu, Finland. October 25, 2019