SFIFF : Children of the Sun May 6, 2008

from http://fest08.sffs.org/films/film_details.php?id=16 :

Not everyone’s home movies chart the rise and fall of a bona fide social movement, but not everyone grew up on a kibbutz. In the early 20th century, these cooperatives sprang up throughout what is today Israel to foster a utopian society based on absolute equality. Children born on the kibbutz, unwitting subjects in a great experiment, were charged with no less than delivering redemption to mankind. Hand-in-hand with the new social order came the abolition of the nuclear family. No mommy and daddy, only nannies. No private bathrooms, only communal coed showers. Children were raised not as individuals but as a group. There was no I, only we. In his moving and unconventional documentary, director Ran Tal collects more than a dozen of these first-generation kibbutzniks and pairs their reminiscences with the splendidly preserved home movies that track their unique upbringing. Limiting the onscreen action to rare archival footage, some of which dates back to the 1930s, Tal remarkably evokes the feeling that we too are a part of the community, gathering around some old Super 8 projector and listening to stories from the past. As we watch the pudgy, tottering babies grow into spindly preteens and finally freethinking adults, our narrators reveal the agonizing emotional isolation that came with being raised en masse without the attention or affection of their own parents. Sometimes with warmth, sometimes with rancor—but always with wit and candor—Tal and his subjects reflect on a fundamentally different way of life, while also hitting on something at the core of human identity.

—Joel Hoglund

This film is competing for a Golden Gate Award. Presented with support from Lynn Kirshbaum. Presented in association with the Consulate General of Israel, San Francisco. Sponsored by San Simeon Films.

Official Website: http://fest08.sffs.org/films/film_details.php?id=16