My Voice Journey...

My Voice Journey (2025) is a short documentary — one of the main outputs of the 'Vocal Authenticity' interdisciplinary research project that was made in collaboration with the School of Arts and Creative Technologies, School for Business and Society and the Department of Language and Linguistic Science at the University of York. The film follows the voice journeys of five selected community singers from marginalized groups living in the deprived Middlesbrough. As an academic researcher with focus on documentary the key question I was concerned with is further interpretation of the elusive notion of 'authenticity' in relation to a 'voice'. How the ‘authentic voice’ is constructed, shared and mediated based on individual, polyphonic and filmmaker’s voices in a documentary with vulnerable contributors? How can we observe the voice changes and the relationship between an individual and their voice through documentary film practice? What are the directorial methods to capture an ‘authentic’ voice of marginalised contributors? I was also curious on how the recorded raw documentary material can become the core source on which my colleagues specialised in community studies and linguistics can generate new ideas. As a filmmaker of Armenian origin, various directorial methods and ‘documentary modes of address’ (Nichols) were tested throughout the filmmaking process. E.g. to identify contributors for the project and to establish rapport between 'the two' - a filmmaker and a vulnerable contributor; or a filmmaker and a community choir; and to get an insider’s view on group dynamics of the seemingly closed circle, I was ‘immersed’ directly in the process of singing to ‘belong’ and to identify myself with the group. The ‘authentic’ voice of a vulnerable contributor/ a singing choir/ of a filmmaker intersects, and is concerned, with the key ideas of the subject of documentary; and the ethical and aesthetic concerns to capture, represent and mediate the real VOICE relies heavily on the filmmaker - the listener/singer/mediator. As a result, various ‘crossings’ can be observed in this project: between my researcher and filmmaker identities; the real and the mediated/generated/interpreted; the others and oneself; the individual- collective- mediated; vulnerable and rebellious. 

"Hasmik Gasparyan is a filmmaker with over twenty-five years of experience working as a filmmaker in Armenia (2000-2010), and later the UK. Her film themes are concerned with the space ‘in between’ - between fiction/non-fiction; sound/silence; presence/absence; inner/outer; belonging and identity. Hasmik's understanding of all stages of film production is backed up by higher education training in Film Direction - PhD by Creative Practice (University of York, UK), MA in Screen Documentary (University of Goldsmiths, UK), BA in Feature Film Direction (Armenian State University). Hasmik is motivated to consistently explore innovative and ethical ways to raise urgent social and cultural issues through documentary storytelling. "