Creator, Producer, Director

Ethnomusicologist, PhD, University Lecturer, Documentarian, Tour Leader in Peru.

Past works: Creator/Producer: Qoyllur Rit’i: A Woman’s Journey, about Peru’s largest pilgrimage festival and her inside role in the festival (1998); Kusisqa Waqashayku (“From Grief and Joy We Sing”), about the annual cycle of musical rituals in Q’eros (2007). Holly has lived in Peru intermittently since 1982, has extensive involvement with the Q’eros community since 2003 and the Deaf community in Cusco and Lima since 2011. The members of the Q’eros community call Holly “chaka warmi” – “bridge woman” – referring to her ability to deeply connect between their Quechua world and others in Peru and abroad.

Holly is Senior Lecturer in Music History, World Musics and Fine Arts at Texas State University during the school year, and lecturer/tour leader and applied ethnomusicologist in Cusco, Peru in the summers. She is fluent in Spanish, and conversant in Quechua, LSP (Peruvian Sign Language) and ASL (American Sign Language).

See her full bio, documentaries and articles HERE.

Creative Consultant

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 he began to learn language for the first time: 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 one year in the post-high school “life skills” program at CSD and is now back at TSD for his final year in a similar program. Holly and Dante spend summers in Peru where he continues to be involved with his deaf peers in Cusco and Lima. Dante’s future plans are to spend more time in Peru.

Dante’s passions are photography, Apple technology, soccer and American football. In the simultaneous progression of both the documentary and Dante’s learning, he continues to give more and more creative input and articulates what he would like to say.

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.

Creative consultants, Camera

Sofia and Carlos (Lima, Peru) are from Mercado Central, an artistic and cultural production collective dedicated to documentary filmmaking in all its formats. Their 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. Sofia is a documentalist and visual anthropologist, exploring themes such as representation, memory and popular cultures. Carlos works as Director of Photography and has shot most of the Lima scenes and interviews for the current edit of this 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 buddy to Dante.

Mercado Central

Interpreter, Peruvian Sign Language (LSP)

Judit has two decades of experience in deaf education and is a professional interpreter in Lima, Peru. She will interpret the final documentary to Peruvian Sign Language (LSP).

Interpreter, American Sign Language (ASL), translator Spanish

Residing in Austin, Texas, and originally from Lima, Fiorela is a professional tri-lingual interpreter (English, Spanish, American Sign Language), and will interpret the documentary into ASL and collaborates on the Spanish subtitle translation. She is also the mother of her deaf son, Liam, who attends the Texas School for the Deaf.

Interpreter and translator, Quechua

Gina is a professional Quechua tutor and native speaker. Gina provides Quechua translation and will provide the Quechua-version voice over of the documentary, as most monolingual Quechua speakers rely on the oral, not written, system of communication.

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.

Pilo’s Music