" cowboys & communists " by jess feast
For three years at the beginning of the millennium, Berlin bar and restaurant White Trash Fast Food/ TORSTRASSE 200 now there a based the janine bean gallery / owned by LA chef and “cowboy” Wally Potts, was the epicentre of hip in a city that was the coolest place on earth. White Trash was a venue for outrageous transvestite burlesque acts, fetishists and alternative musos – Mick Jagger came to sample their cheeseburgers and electro star Peaches was a regular DJ. But Potts had set up shop underneath an apartment block in former East Berlin, where residents, in particular the charming ex-journalist Horst Woitalla, preferred a quiet life of communist regulation and curfew. Their age-old story of conflict and clashing idealism is told in Wellington-based filmmaker Jess Feast’s fascinating and vibrant documentary, which explores the reality of life behind the Berlin Wall after its collapse. While working as a waitress at White Trash for 18 months, Feast encountered an ironic new class of refugees: American artists and libertines who fled to East Berlin to escape George Dubya’s oppressive regime.
short trailer >>
Cowboys and Communists is the story of two clashing political systems, the reality of life behind the Berlin wall, the collapse and aftermath of Communism, the tragedy of Bush’s America and the difference between Sauerkraut and cheeseburgers.
The Cowboy is Wally Potts. He’s an artist and chef from LA who escaped America to start something new and he now owns one of the most successful restaurants in Berlin "The White Trasch Fast Food".
He’s living out his American Dream in Germany.
The Communist is Horst Woitalla. Horst believed in Communism with all his heart and his very sharp mind. The day the wall fell was the worst day of his life. And you can’t help but feel for him – he lost everything he ever knew over night.
The lives of these two men collide when Wally opens a late night burlesque burger bar, ‘White Trash Fast Food’ in the bottom floor of an East Berlin apartment block where Horst has lived since the Communist era. Horst is determined to take back some of his power and close down ‘White Trash Fast Food’. Wally meanwhile, vies to fight to protect his new-found freedom.
At first it seems like Wally and Horst couldn’t be more different, but over the course of the film you’ll realise that in fact they have a lot of similarities. They are both working class people fighting for their place in a community and a sense of freedom in a system they have no control over.
Cowboys & Communists, New Zealand, 2007
Director: Jess Feast
Producers: Jess Feast, Dave Gibson
Photography: Bernadette Paassen
Editors: Paul Sutorius, Jess Feast, Lala Rolls
Sound: Nic Nagel
contact jess feast
http://www.gibson.co.nz/company/entry/team1
www.whitetrashfastfood.com
