NEWS/
AN INTERVIEW WITH
RAN TAL
By Maria Belilovskaya
Why did you decide to focus your film on a family in the kibbutz?
I understood that the story of the kibbutz might be very big. But I really thought that to focus on these small intimate things, on this radical alternative family of the kibbutz, would be a good chance to tell a story that is very intimate, on the one hand, but, on the other hand, would be a big one. I really believe in intimate cinema, instead of the cinema that tries to put everything together and ends up not catching anything.
You interviewed your mother and other relatives for the film. How did you persuade them to participate?
That was very easy! I started with my family and with the editor’s family as well. They were happy to talk. Many of them really have the passion to recall their childhood, this culture that does not exist anymore. To build a narrative out of all this was difficult because we had hours and hours of interviews. But to make them talk, we just had to put in the tape and ask questions.
So you did not film your interviews?
No, I did not film them. I didn’t want to leave a chance to make a talking heads documentary. I didn’t want people to come and say, “Hey, it’s not working, maybe we can show your mother crying?” I didn’t want to do that, so I decided to record only sound.
How many people did you interview?
I interviewed around 40 people. Nearly 30 of these interviews are in the film.
It must have taken a long time.
It took three years to make the film. Interviews, research, and editing. It’s a huge collage.
What was your research like?
I was looking for the footage. I went from kibbutz to kibbutz, from archive to archive. People that established kibbutzim came from Europe and they had a very strong need to document everything and to keep their records. There is a huge amount of stuff in Israeli archives. When I put this all together, many people who watched the film were, like, “This really looks like our kibbutz!” But it was actually cut from more than 80 different films, from many kibbutzim over many years.
What was the reaction to the film in Israel?
It was very successful. The film was released after the Jerusalem Film Festival, in September, and it played in Tel Aviv for more than 45 weeks, like a commercial movie. More than 30,000 people saw it, really rare for a documentary. When we were editing the movie, we did not think that anyone would want to see it because, you know, it’s all archives, no hero and no concise story. It’s all against the rules of a conventional documentary.
What is the attitude to kibbutzim in today’s Israel?
The discourse was always very politicized. People either hated the kibbutz or admired it. It always stirred a lot of emotions. When I was a kid, and when my mother was a kid, it was the best place in the world. In the last 20 years, the discourse has changed. Now, they actually demonize the kibbutz life and take kibbutz people out of historical and political context, making them look ridiculous. The main change is that now kibbutz life is an alternative but it used to be mainstream. That’s what was so fascinating about the kibbutz movement: In other places in the world, in Europe, communes were always a marginal force. In Israel, kibbutzim had the power.
What do your kids think of the kibbutz? Do they think it’s cool or weird?
They like it. They like to visit my mom, who still lives there. There they can run free; the weather is always nice. But they wouldn’t want to live all together in a children’s home.
