Ezra Dagan Movies
- 1986
This future dystopia tale is set in what remains of the U.S.A. 900 years after a nuclear war. People have banded into clans, where women fight and win control over a region while men are held as slaves and divided into functional groups, such as laborers, servants, or those who father children. When the leader of the dominant female clan dies, there is a dispute over her vacated position; two sisters vie for the honor and are challenged by the leader of a another clan. Meanwhile, one of the men has found an old presidential bunker and a stash of weapons. His plan is to use his discovery to free the men at last. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Chuck Wagner, Laurene Landon, (more)
- 1988
Decades before Israel was created, dedicated Jewish men and women gathered in Palestine as part of the kibbutz movement. With a variety of ideologies, most of them based on some form of Marxism, kibbutzim (kibbutz-dwellers) almost universally practiced a form of consensual communitarianism: all property was held in common, all tasks and roles were shared (where possible) in rotation, and almost all decisions were based on a vote among kibbutz members. Since this was before the various women's equality movements and so on, these ideas (which did not allow for gender-based distinctions) were pretty radical. Some kibbutzes encouraged religious practice, others were strictly for atheist Jews. In this drama, a group of true-believers in the communist ideal who are also kibbutzim have their faith shaken when Stalin's pact with the Nazis comes to light. Some of the same kibbutzim have a new difficulty when, after the war, they must confront the West German Compensations Agreement. Through that agreement, they are being offered what are (to them) huge sums of money in recompense for the Holocaust. Now they must decide whether to keep the money (and leave the kibbutz) or share it with all the others, as they have done with all outside earnings in the past. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Shmuel Shilo
Based on a true story, Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List stars Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler, a German businessman in Poland who sees an opportunity to make money from the Nazis' rise to power. He starts a company to make cookware and utensils, using flattery and bribes to win military contracts, and brings in accountant and financier Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) to help run the factory. By staffing his plant with Jews who've been herded into Krakow's ghetto by Nazi troops, Schindler has a dependable unpaid labor force. For Stern, a job in a war-related plant could mean survival for himself and the other Jews working for Schindler. However, in 1942, all of Krakow's Jews are assigned to the Plaszow Forced Labor Camp, overseen by Commandant Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), an embittered alcoholic who occasionally shoots prisoners from his balcony. Schindler arranges to continue using Polish Jews in his plant, but, as he sees what is happening to his employees, he begins to develop a conscience. He realizes that his factory (now refitted to manufacture ammunition) is the only thing preventing his staff from being shipped to the death camps. Soon Schindler demands more workers and starts bribing Nazi leaders to keep Jews on his employee lists and out of the camps. By the time Germany falls to the allies, Schindler has lost his entire fortune -- and saved 1,100 people from likely death. Schindler's List was nominated for 12 Academy Awards and won seven, including Best Picture and a long-coveted Best Director for Spielberg, and it quickly gained praise as one of the finest American movies about the Holocaust. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, (more)
