From New Wave to the New Romantics, from Neue Deutsche Welle to "Neues Deutschland", from Ostrock to Hardrock:
The documentary "Sweet Dreams - The Music of the 80s" takes a musical journey back to a decade, which at the beginning nobody knew would change the world completely.
A decade in which artists who are now superstars entered the international stage for the first time. A decade in the shadow of the power blocs in East and West, in which pop spawned new subcultures - from the apolitical to the rebellious. And while people in the old FRG were acting cool, in the GDR resentment began to seethe and soon broke through musically – in the constant battle with the censorship. Here as there, Anglo-American models were combined with German texts. And here as well as there, rock and pop music stood for freedom - even if it was ruled by party apparatuses or commercial constraints. In archive recordings and interviews with musicians, artists, media professionals and politicians, "Sweet Dreams - The Music of the 80s" illuminates what it meant to live on either side of a wall that separated two systems. What it meant to music - and what pop music meant to people. At the end of the decade, the Wall that had divided Germany fell with the Iron Curtain. A generation that grew up listening to rock 'n' roll became part of a (largely) peaceful revolution across Europe.