Posted: April 29, 2008

Before "Hear and Now," there was "Sound and Fury"--the Oscar-nominated 2000 documentary that chronicled the contentious debate of the Artinian family over whether to implant their 6-year-old daughter, Heather, with a cochlear device.

That film was as bellicose as "Hear and Now" is inspirational, with deaf parents Peter and Nita clashing with Peter's hearing parents and his hearing brother, Chris--the parent of a deaf son--over the prospect of implantation, which Heather requested. The documentary ended with Chris's child receiving an implant, and Peter and Nita relocating from Long Island to a deaf community in Maryland .

Shot in 1998 and '99, "Sound and Fury" was a tempest-in-a-teapot microcosm of a then-brewing culture war--the deaf community vs. the cochlear community, with members of the former fearful that their way of life would become supplanted by technology that would alienate them from their own children.

In 2006, "Sound and Fury" director Josh Aronson reconnected with the Artinians. What he found in his 29-minute postscript "Sound and Fury--Six Years Later" was a family that had healed its wounds, returned to Long Island and given Heather, at age 9, the implant she'd wanted for years. What's more, Nita also received the device, as did Peter and Nita's two young sons.

"I've gotten a thousand e-mails asking me when the follow-up was going to happen, and whatever happened to Heather, so I just thought it was time to do it," says Aronson, who offers the DVD through his production company, Aronson Films ( www.aronsonfilms.com). He readily acknowledges that "Six Years Later" is less dramatic than its parent project. "They got the implant and their life goes on--they're doing great," he says. "That's why it's a follow-up film. It's not really a movie that has sturm und drang and conflict, and all the things you like to have in a movie."

Seeing the Artinians' nurturing interactions in "Six Years Later," you're hard-pressed to begrudge them their right to this newfound, drama-free existence. Aronson says he wasn't surprised by Peter and Nita's dramatic shift in attitude regarding cochlear implantation. "I've seen it all over the country--the deaf culture accepting it and a lot of deaf children getting implants," he says. "I knew it was in the air, and I knew Heather wanted it very badly. I assumed that she was going to start pressuring her parents [again]. And Peter learned a lot; he grew a lot. He saw that it was effective, and part of the reason why they didn't implant Heather was lack of information. They had heard so many things from the deaf culture, and they didn't know if it was real or disinformation or misinformation. Three years [later], he'd come to the conclusion that a lot of it was just bogus."

The short film--which was funded in part by a grant from Cochlear Americas--reveals Heather to be a bright, ebullient 12-year-old who's in the top 10 percent of her class (an interpreter helps her through rough patches). She appears to integrate smoothly with hearing students at her public school, where she's a member of the basketball and volleyball teams. At home, where she still signs with her parents, she receives speech therapy alongside her brothers and cousins.

Aronson says Heather's speech has continued to improve dramatically since shooting wrapped on "Six Years Later" two years ago. "She's a delicious kid," he gushes. "She's trying so hard, and she's the most popular kid in class. No one teases her."

"The more the deaf culture and the hearing world understand each other, the better we can support each other and co-exist," observes Peter Artinian in the film's coda. "If the two worlds don't work together, everything falls apart."