Wieland Speck studied German literature, drama and ethnology. He attended the San Francisco Art Institute where he started directing short narrative films.
Since 1982, he has been working for the Berlin International Film Festival, first as assistant director to Manfred Salzgeber in the Panorama Section and then, beginning in 1992, as the program director of Panorama. Wieland is a fiction director whose best known film is the feature, Westler: East of the Wall.
He originally began preparing Westler in order to arrange a public outing of his East German boyfriend, believing that the authorities would expatriate his lover to Western Germany. The boyfriend was allowed to leave the German Democratic Republic before filming started; the project was already underway and was then filmed with a new actor for the "Easterner" character.
Westler was theatrically released in West Germany, Holland, Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, USA, England and Austria.
In 1989, Speck wrote and directed six short films for the German AIDS foundation. They are titled Mach Freunde mit Gummi (parts I and II), Mehr als nur einen, Übung macht den Meister - Discover Your Rubber, Gay TV and Porno 90. The running times are between 3 and 23 minutes. In Gay TV, some gay icons appear, including writers Detlev Meyer and Max Goldt, Eschi Rehm and Speck himself.
Wieland is an inteligent, distinguished, and a handsome guy... Wieland has always been involved in different activities. He worked in plays and movies, as actor, directed Fashion Shows, has attended controversial institutions as the Berlin Free University and the San Francisco Art Institute, and held a course in Theatre Studies at a Berlin university.
He also worked with contemporary German icons such as Nina Hagen, Ulrike Ottinger and Rosa von Praunheim. The relationship between Wieland and Mix Brasil has been going on for a while.
His many awards include the Special Jury Award and the Audience Award, Max Ophüls Festival, Germany' Best Feature Film, San Francisco Lesbian & Gay Film Festival; and Grand Prix: Brussels, Belgium; Festival Cinéma et Homosexualités and Turin, Italy, Gay & Lesbian Film Festival.
