Documentary Completion: Dante's Story

A very warm welcome to you who are reading this! I am Holly Wissler, ethnomusicologist and educator in the U.S. and Peru. I am asking for your support to complete my project from the heart – a documentary about my adopted deaf son, Dante, from the remote Quechua community of Q’eros in the high Andes of Peru, where I was immersed for years learning about their indigenous musical rituals. This feature-length documentary is about the transformative power of language acquisition, human connection and compassion. We see 20 years of Dante's life, from his mother's womb in Q’eros, migration to Cusco and the U.S., through to high school graduation from the California School for the Deaf.

This documentary is the story of awakenings. Unsocialized and marginalized, Dante awakens into humanity and connection with the world when he moves to Cusco and begins to learn Peruvian sign language at age eight. Over the course of our years together, I move from being his godmother to his mother – a personal awakening of unforeknown compassion. I am also catapulted into learning about the needs of a deaf boy, learning to sign, and challenges of creative forms of communication when neither one of us have the language.

It broke my heart that Dante had to leave his home country of Peru to receive an education beyond elementary school, which catalyzed me to make this documentary about the lack of language access, deaf education and rights in Peru. This documentary will raise awareness about deaf experience and discrimination. We include Dante’s educators and deaf adults from the U.S. and Peru to tell our story.

This is a grass roots project. Thanks to previous donations, we now have a solid one-hour working edit that we are expanding on. This edit has undergone processes of stasis and creativity from 2017 to now, with unforeseen obstacles such as necessary script changes, difficulties of immigration to the U.S. and the pandemic. Our new vision with this edit will include: change and expansion in artistic expression, new and current material, Dante’s re-uniting with his birth family post-pandemic and high school graduation.

Your donations will be used for: final shooting of new material, editing, sound track composition, translation into five languages (English, Spanish, Quechua, ASL and LSP - American and Peruvian sign languages), post-production, and dissemination.

For in-depth information, see our documentary website that tells all:

https://www.wisslerdocumentary.org/

Please email me directly with any questions, information about having your name in the credits or being an "executive producer." Please pass this fundraiser on to anyone you think may be interested.

I thank you in advance.

Warmly,

Holly Wissler