The creative team is based in three countries: U.S, Peru and Argentina
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Holly Wissler, PhD, is an applied ethnomusicologist, documentary filmmaker, and cultural tour leader with extensive field experience in Peru and Nepal. She is Assistant Professor of Instruction in Western Classical Music History, World Music Cultures, and Fine Arts at Texas State University and serves as a local expert in Peru for organizations including National Geographic and Wilderness Travel. Her research centers on the musical traditions and contemporary transformations of Indigenous communities in the Peruvian Andes and Amazon, with a focus on Indigenous theories of music, audiovisual repatriation and preservation, sustainable tourism, and music as a medium for expressions of grief and healing. She has published widely in English and Spanish and produced two documentaries, Qoyllur Rit’i: A Woman’s Journey, on Peru’s largest pilgrimage festival, and Kusisqa Waqashayku (“From Grief and Joy We Sing”), which explores the annual cycle of musical rituals in the Quechua community of Q’eros community, her area of expertise. Her current work engages Deaf culture and advocacy, including her newly released documentary, Dante’s Story: The Fight for Deaf Rights in Peru (2026), which follows her journey with her adopted deaf son and highlights the urgent need for communication access and deaf education in Peru. A classically trained flutist, she also performs on Andean instruments and speaks English, Spanish, Quechua, Nepali, and American Sign Language.
In fall 2026 Wissler is visiting professor on exchange with Vijaybhoomi University outside of Mumbai, and in spring 2027 a Fulbright Scholar teaching and researching in the ethnomusicology department at Kathmandu University.
Take out the page of the "full bio, documentaries and articles" and simply add these links below right under my bio:
Documentary and Article Links
2007 documentary Kusisqa Waqashayku (“From Grief and Joy We Sing”), about the annual cycle of musical rituals in Q’eros.
English version: “From Grief and Joy We Sing”
Quechua version: “Kusisqa Waqashayku”
Article publications:
2018: “Where Dead People Walk”: Fifty Years of Archives to Q’eros, Peru. Oxford University Press.
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The Protagonist
In 2003 Dante Flores Apaza was born profoundly deaf in the remote Quechua community of Q’eros in the Andes of Peru. He moved to the city of Cusco at age 7 ½ where he began to learn Peruvian Sign Language. At age 13, after completing elementary school at San Francisco de Asís school for deaf children in Cusco, Dante moved to Austin, Texas to attend the Texas School for the Deaf. In Austin he was diagnosed with Usher’s Syndrome 1B, and his deteriorating vision brings added challenges. In 2022 Dante moved to the California School for the Deaf in Fremont, to finish his junior and senior years. In the summers he worked for the Northwest Youth Corps in Washington state. He graduated from high school in June 2023 and completed two years in the post-high school “life skills” program at CSD and TSD. Holly and Dante spend summers in Peru where he continues to be involved with his deaf peers in Cusco and Lima. Dante’s passions are photography, Apple technology, and soccer.
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Editor
Pablo is a first-generation Mexican American filmmaker and photographer. They are an MFA Candidate in NYU's Grad Film Program and a 2024 PD Soros Fellow. Pablo has traveled extensively through Peru, has been to Q’eros twice for filming, and is close friend to Dante and his family.
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Carlos Sánchez Giraldo
Creative consultant, Camera
Carlos (Lima, Peru) is from Mercado Central, an artistic and cultural production collective dedicated to documentary filmmaking in all its formats. His various projects combine the plastic arts and written and audiovisual media to build everyday stories. Based in Lima, Mercado Central works throughout Peru and the Andean region. Carlos is an esteemed Director of Photography, and shot many of the Lima interviews in the documentary. Carlos was compadre with Dante’s father, Victor Flores Salas, before his untimely death in 2018, and principal camera on Holly’s two-week expedition for the return of fifty years of archives to the Q’eros Nation in 2010. Carlos is also a role model and friend to Dante.
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Interpreter, Peruvian Sign Language (LSP)
Judit has three decades of experience in deaf education and is a professional LSP (Peruvian Sign Language) interpreter in Lima, Peru. She is the LSP interpreter on the Spanish + LSP version.
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Fiorela, originally from Lima, now resides in Austin, Texas where she is a professional tri-lingual interpreter (English, Spanish, American Sign Language). She collaborated on English/Spanish translation is the ASL interpreter on the English + ASL documentary version. She is also the mother of her deaf son, Liam, who attends the Texas School for the Deaf.
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Interpreter and translator, Quechua
Gina is a professional Quechua tutor and native speaker from Chumbivilcas, Peru. Gina provided all Quechua/Spanish translations.
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Soundtrack composer
Pilo is a professional musician on guitar, charango, quena, as well as original composer, producer and arranger. Pilo has thirty years’ experience in national and international tours in Latin America, fifteen years of soundtrack composition for both feature-length and short films, and ten released albums.
Carlos Sánchez Giraldo Creative Consultant, Camera
Holly Wissler Creator, Producer, Director
Dante Wissler The Protagonist
Pablo Mejia Editor
Judit Santillana Interpreter, Peruvian Sign Language (LSP)
Pilo Garcia Soundtrack composer.
Gina Maldonado Interpreter and translator, Quechua
Fiorela Agusti Interpreter, American Sign Language (ASL), translator Spanish