Happy? is an exploration of how the passage of time affects people. In the eight months preceding January 1, 2000, I shot digital video in New York City, approaching passersby on the street and asking them direct questions about how they felt about the passage of time. Using the millennium as a starting point ("Are you ready for the millennium?"), a way of opening up discussion with strangers, my interviews took on a rollicking, discursive quality.This project is inspired by Chronicle of a Summer (1961) by Jean Rouch and The Pretty Month of May (1963) by Chris Marker. Both these films use random street interviews to capture the spirit of a time and place. Happy? starts from a similar place#simple questions that some dismiss but others celebrate in varied and complicated ways. The result is a hybrid of documentary and anthropological film, part time-capsule and part taped performance piece.

Happy? challenges and tweaks the hype about the millennium and asks direct questions about how people negotiate growing up, older and the world changing around them. The mainstream media concentrated on the "celebrations" planned and issues about dysfunctional technology. This work amplifies actual thoughts and feelings about things changing on personal and global levels. Happy? attempts to show how people are struggling with issues of decay and transition in a famously unreflective age and country.