I was introduced to the kibbutz concept through the simple doc, Children of the Sun. I readily confess to know very little about the community, and unfortunately, the film did not expand on its basic premise or how the communities came to be. However, it was extremely interesting.
The film consists of a group of kibbutzees reminiscing as home videos are played of their childhood. They often alternate between happy memories of exploration to regret that they did not know their family very well and lacked a connection to the outside world.
Parental attention was allotted a 3-hour visit per day and a nightly tuck-in. Children often cried themselves to sleep and lacked family connections, and nannies became the recipients of their affection. It is interesting to hear them discuss their life as an experiment, unaware of the concept of nuclear families as opposed to their communal family and realizing that most children did not work away hours through daily physical labor.
A tightly focused doc that would have benefitted from an expansion of info, but it succeeded in piquing my interest to learn more.