Wieland Speck's Moving and Still Images

Wieland Speck used to shoot videos just to create stills from them and then delete the existing footage in order to copy newer, more urgent images on to the expensive VHS cassettes. To create a portrait of Wieland Speck, who celebrates his 60th birthday in July, three things need to be considered, all of which are inextricably linked to movement: queer history, film and festival history and the history of the divided and reunified Berlin. When Speck moved to Berlin from Freiburg in 1972, he was already exploring male emancipation and homosexual identity, producing art and creating new cultural spaces. After getting to know the Kuchars through Rosa von Praunheim and not being accepted to study at the DFFB, he ended up going to San Francisco to study film with George Kuchar. Once back in Berlin, he started working for the Panorama section of the Berlinale in 1982. Together with Manfred Salzgeber, he founded the Teddy Award, a prize for gay film which has been awarded during the Berlinale since 1987. Since 1992, Wieland Speck has been the director of Panorama.

As an artist, Speck has always made use of the fact that film consists of individual images: video stills become photographic pieces, film stills are turned into independent works, slides and polaroids are used to tell biographical stories, and photographic montages end up blurring perspectives. The possibilities offered by cinema are an experience which emerge in his film and artistic work.