While ill and experiencing some difficulty in completing the editing of this film, Brakhage was reading the Marguerite Young novel, "Miss MacIntosh, My Darling.
Coast Zone […] explores the use of deep-focus, contrasting background figures (often in motion) with those in the foreground (sometimes in extreme close-up).
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.
The criminalist Hannes Bergemann tries to blackmail the city where he spent his youth. After many years returning to the familiar places of his childhood, he hopes to meet again his old friends, especially Fred, Helmuth and Richard, with whom he had a close childhood friendship.