While ill and experiencing some difficulty in completing the editing of this film, Brakhage was reading the Marguerite Young novel, "Miss MacIntosh, My Darling.
Berlin in the early 1930s. Bello is an unemployed young man who loves the underage Frieda. In order to earn a living for both of them, Frieda goes on the streets.
A young half-breed boy, the son of a hockey player and an Indian woman, is adopted by a Jewish shopkeeper, but finds himself torn between the different cultures with which he comes into contact.
Coast Zone […] explores the use of deep-focus, contrasting background figures (often in motion) with those in the foreground (sometimes in extreme close-up).