Happillness
Production: TEI of Athens/Graphic Design DepartmentIllustration/Animation/Design: Maria Kozari Mela
Sound Design: Ted Regklis
Music Composition: Dimitris Poulopoulos
Music production: Kostis Fillipopoulos
Animation Director: Nick Moutafis
Supervisor: Konstantinos Tiligadis
By the time you are incapable to accept your "illness" and prepare yourself for a proper "treatment", you are condemned to live an immoral, distorted, illusive world, just to cover what you have with fake happiness, by this time, you are living "Happillness".
With a strong critical point of view “Happillness” illustrates the agony of the modern woman to live up to the role and the conduct framework that the still patriarchal society of today has arranged in advance for her.
The title already, combining three words into one, achieves to introduce the viewer not only to the key-element of the plot (the pills that will fulfill the virtual/seeming desires of the modern woman) but also its principal idea: pursuing the happiness – in its modern distorted meaning – will lead eventually to illness. A psychological, mental and social illness.
Each pill represents one embodiment of the “successful woman” in the mediated and marketed society of today. The yellow one is for the money, the blue one for the attractive appearance and the red one for the false, temporal “love”.
But the rules of the art of painting are clear: mixing all those colors together creates a new – and only – color: BLACK. Just like the soul of the woman starring in the film, who in the end, incapable of finding the promised “happiness” breaks into pieces.
It has been shortlisted in many international festival and has won the 3rd prize at the Athens 8th Animfest 2013.
