In 2009, Jennifer Hitchcock and her husband, Vernon Hall, traveled to Israel and the West Bank with a $600 Canon camera to find and capture the voices of Israeli and Palestinian nonviolence advocates and activists. Their objective was to challenge the dominant narratives of violence, terrorism, and oppression perpetuated by the mainstream U.S. media, and Dreams Deferred: The Struggle for Peace and Justice in Israel and Palestine documents voices of nonviolence activism as an alternative to such narratives. In the following article, Jennifer takes us
behind the camera to explain what compelled her and Vernon to make their documentary, why they made the choices they did, and how they went about making their first featurelength documentary. Theirs is a story that illustrates the rhetorical power of do-ityourself activism in response to a deeply felt call to action.
A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric