“We never worried about not having a place to live or a job, or about being evicted. There were no worries or fears about our livelihoods and there was so much in the way of culture and recreation that was available most of the time at little or no cost.”
She said that “attempts were always made not only that you had a job but that it was the best job you could do and whenever possible a job you really liked.”
Zastrow explained that she disliked the technical aspects of her schooling, despite the fact that they were providing her with skills that were quite useable. “I love animals,” she said, “and really wanted to have a career working with them.” She described how “there were needs for everything in the GDR, for people who could do all kinds of things and they worked to get me a job that I loved, a job on a large agricultural dairy collective where I had such good times working with more than 300 cows!”
I participated in a course last year that was on east german cinema during the last few years of the countries existence (lots of really fantastic films) and one of the biggest revelations came when we watched some documentary from the 2000s that interviewed some experimental filmmakers from east berlin and one of the filmmakers said something to the effect of "rent in east berlin was 20 mark, gas and electricity were no more than 10 mark, we had nothing but time back then".
If you made films at the DEFA, the east german state-owned film studio, as a director you were fully-employed all year through and had to produce maybe two films a year. These people lived in the literal "Schlaraffenland" and didn't even fucking know it.
Any chance you remember the name of the documentary/ know where to find a copy? I bet my study group would love that.
It's called "Die Subversive Kamera" (The subversive camera) from 1996 by Cornelia Klauß. It's only in german and I don't think there are any subtitles available anywhere, but I could still send you the file if you still want it.
Yes, please. That would be awesome. I did find this The Subversive Camera @ DEFA Film Library which indicates there are subs out there. The whole DVD it's on sounds interesting, but I don't have the spare cash and I can't remember the last time I had a DVD drive to rip it with.