The interactive documentary Jerusalem, We Are Here (JWRH) (2016) digitally reinscribes Palestinians into the Jerusalem neighborhoods from which they were expelled in 1948. The project was created by filmmaker and film theorist Dorit Naaman in close collaboration with Palestinian participants and other contributors. Two of Naaman’s closest collaborators are Marina Parisinou who started as a participant, and eventually also became an associate producer of the project; and Mona Hajjar Halaby, an amateur social historian of Palestine, who does the English narration and was the inspiration behind the map portion, having kept track of Jerusalemites’ houses for years.
Following the release of JWRH, the three women continued to work closely together to expand and disseminate the project. Furthermore, they leveraged the synergy they had developed, as well as the power of the internet, to inspire and support each other in the creation of a number of offshoot projects about Palestine, focused mostly on Jerusalem. In this conversation, they take stock of their collaboration, the paths that led them to their current projects, what they have learned in the process and their plans for the future. The project is freely available online at jerusalemwearehere. com