It's 1989. The action begins in East Berlin, where some art is acceptable and official, and where elsewhere, other artworks and galleries fly under the Stasi's radar. The film follows a group of East German artists visiting New York on a cultural exchange. Meanwhile, amidst crumbling buildings, AIDS activism, and high-rolling galleries, we meet some young American artists navigating the currents of expanding and collapsing economies. As the story unfolds, the two groups connect and collide.
At the center of the film is a love story between Alixe, an American girl trying to enter an impenetrable art world, and Wolfgang, an East German art student kicked out of East Germany for doing the wrong kind of art, then dispatched to New York by his chilly West German relatives.
The story’s about how artists survive, and about how all people outmaneuver and succumb to the political and economic systems we've created. It’s also about information systems: what the gathering of information does to those who gather it, and to those whose lives are under scrutiny.
Prenzlauer Berg is an episodic project. We are currently talking to potential production partners.