Visible Voices, Changing Lives

In 2006 I embarked on the first in a series of Visible Voice projects using participatory video and photography techniques as an ethnographic research strategy and as a means of encouraging people to voice, represent and publicise issues of importance in their everyday lives. In April 2006 the first Visible Voice project took place in the remote mountain villages of Kokjar and Tolok in Kyrgyzstan Central Asia. In June 2008 I returned to Kyrgyzstan to work with the villagers as they began their migration to the high mountain pastures near to the Son Kul lake.

Combining short extracts from the villagers own videos with footage shot during the projects this film examines the challenges faced by semi nomadic communities living in Kyrgyzstan’s remote mountain valleys as they struggle to adapt to climatic, cultural and economic changes in the post Soviet period. The film is an attempt to present the lived experiences of the community in a way that values the participants and their work in ways that could not be achieved or represented through traditional academic publication in print media.