Abschied von gestern (Yesterday Girl)

Born in Leipzig in 1937 to Jewish parents, Anita G., a former telephone operator, fled the GDR for the West in the 1960s. She found a job as a nurse, but after receiving a suspended sentence following a theft, she moved to another city. Working as a sales representative for a record company, she forges order forms, lives beyond her means and becomes her boss’s mistress. However, for the sake of his wife, he breaks off the relationship and reports her to the police. Anita then loses her next job as a chambermaid, tries in vain to take up a university course, and has a shortlived affair with a married senior civil servant.
Drifting through West Germany, Anita becomes increasingly unable to find her place in the post-war society.

Anita is like a seismograph probing our society […] As the child of Jewish parents, Anita experienced persecution during the Third Reich […] After the war, her parents were initially able to set up factories in the Eastern Zone. Anita received a few years’ schooling in the GDR, then, as the “daughter of a capitalist”, she no longer felt safe and went to the West. I believe she left because she no longer wanted to identify with her parents, whose powerlessness she had witnessed. […] This society essentially demands a certain degree of sceptical equanimity from its members, yet it does not require them to form a firm will. And Anita is constantly trying to form a firm will. In a different setting and with different challenges, Anita would be a sociable person and probably a first-class functionary. But as she never seriously understands why one does things, such as working, she merely adheres to the outward form. Her story would be different if she lived in a different society. And it would also be different if the Germans had a different history.
Alexander Kluge: Tribüne des jungen deutschen Films in “Filmkritik” 9/66, 10th year, 9th issue

PRODUCTION:
Kairos-Film - Alexander Kluge,
Friedrichstrasse 17
80801 München, Germany
E-mail: info@dctp.de
Web: https://kluge-alexander.de

PRODUCTION AT THE TIME OF FILMING: 
​Kairos-Film

LAB:
Reitz-Medien

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