“The White Stripe” was the name of an art project in which five GDR citizens from the Weimar punk and underground scene who had left the GDR in 1986 wanted to paint a line around the Western side of the Berlin wall. On the second day, GDR border guards ambushed them and one of the friends ended up in Bautzen prison. Only after years in the West did they find out that in the GDR one of them had reported their activities – and about his brother.
Gerd Kroske plumbs the depths of betrayal, suppression and forgiveness in interviews with the protagonists, including a brash (and not unsympathetic) border guard, supported by a wealth of archive material with the scratchy, anarchic charm of Super 8 and ORWO. He insists without discrediting. The deeper he delves into the past, the more it recedes in favour of the question how both sides continued to live with the betrayal. The topicality of this story emerges in the great final showdown between the brothers as well as in the recurring images of the wall between Israel and Palestine. It’s not that easy to paint lines even today. Especially if it’s the line you want to draw under something.
Grit Lemke