“Anger Disgust Fear Happiness Sadness Surprise” are the six emotions that are defined to be culturally universal by the  Emotion Facial Action Coding System (Emfacs) developed by Paul Ekman and Wallace V Friesen in the 1980s. This specific system of emotion definitions and taxonomies is the backbone of most emotion recognition systems today.  Almost all emotion recognition systems have varying degrees of inaccuracy and often classified people’s emotions incorrectly. “Anger Disgust Fear Happiness Sadness Surprise” explores the complexities of how machines confuse human emotions, but the deeper questions of how do we emote, what do we emote, and are we allowed to express emotions equally? 

This film was commissioned by MozFest 2019, and was presented along with a poster of poetic instructions towards creating emotional resilience and obfuscation over technology systems.

The film features actor Marc Nikoleit, with development guidance by Jay Mollica and filming and editing by Wrangel Film.