"The american dream - eine verlorene Liebe?"

Opening, Part 1.

Opening-day deal: anyone attending both "Hamburg liest Amerika" and "Szenario" can get a combined ticket for 50 EUR instead of 65 EUR. Just add both individual tickets to your cart - the discount is applied automatically.

A many-voiced portrait of the country that has shaped the Western world, Germany, and the emigrant city of Hamburg more than almost anything else - told with and by the city's own residents. No country promises social mobility and freedom quite like the USA, and no country has stirred as much global controversy either. For Germans in particular, this is a contradiction that is hard to resolve.

And yet American culture dominates and fascinates: music from jazz through rock and pop, from Woodstock to Madonna, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, or Bruce Springsteen; literature from Mark Twain to Bret Easton Ellis, Jonathan Franzen, Margaret Atwood, or Ocean Vuong; films from "Gone with the Wind" to "American Psycho"; stars from Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe to Tom Cruise or Leonardo DiCaprio.

Is it all over? Do we have to say goodbye to all these loves? Does our affection stand a chance of surviving - despite the pomp and the terror? 250 years of America in 2 hours - can it be done? Of course not. That would be 12 minutes per 25 years, less than a minute per year.

The afternoon looks for surprising combinations and snapshots. One thing is fixed at the start: Senator for Culture Carsten Brosda and Joachim Lux are both self-confessed Bruce Springsteen fans...

And the ending is fixed too: at 18:00 it's over, however far we've got! What comes next - maybe with a hamburger in hand around the corner!