INDEPENDENT LENS features unforgettable stories about a unique individual, community or moment in history. The series is supported by interactive companion web sites and national publicity and community engagement campaigns. Acclaimed actor and filmmaker Stanley Tucci hosts the series.
"Happiness" - In 1999, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck made a landmark proclamation approving the use of television and the internet in the tiny South Asian nation of Bhutan, promising to usher in a new modern era and increase the nation’s “gross national happiness.”
But he cautioned the youth of the country in his speech, warning that TV and the internet have “contents that are both harmful and useful to you and your country. For this reason, we must be careful and selective in using this new resource.” "Happiness," the new film by Thomas Balmès (director of the hit documentary "Babies"), is a haunting portrait of an ancient society on the brink of technological revolution. The film premieres on INDEPENDENT LENS on Monday, November 17, 2014 on PBS.
Over a decade after the King’s proclamation, the remote mountainside village of Laya is still without electricity. Peyangki, a dreamy and solitary nine-year-old Buddhist monk, yearns for the world to come to him in the form of a flickering television screen. Between studying and prayer, he watches as his world is slowly transformed by the arrival of new roads and electrical cables.
Finally, when taken by his uncle to the capital city of Thimphu, he discovers a new and bustling world of traffic, indoor plumbing, and nightclubs, as they search for the perfect television to bring back to the village. He will have access to 46 television stations for 13 hours every day. How will these images shape a child so isolated from commerce, materialism and celebrity?
In "Happiness," filmmaker Balmès captures the moment where ancient life bows to the seduction of technology, illuminating how complicated and bittersweet the arrival of progress can be.
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Coming to Independent Lens: Happiness
"A 9-year-old monk has never before left his Bhutanese village perched high in the Himalayas
