Klaus Maeck

In 1979, Maeck opened the first punk recordstore (Rip Off) in his hometown of Hamburg, which soon distributed independent German music worldwide (until 1985). Around the same time he started to shoot and cut up Super 8 films and wrote and produced his first feature film Decoder, based on W.S.Burroughs cut up writings. Burroughs himself played a small key role, recorded during the Final Academy in 1982. Parallel to the release of the film in 1984 Maeck co-organized and recorded Burroughs last reading dates in Germany. At the Berlin reading he filmed an extensive interview with Burroughs by Jürgen Ploog, both edited in the film portrait William S.Burroughs: Commissioner of Sewers (1991).

Finding it difficult to survive as a filmmaker he was co-founder and longtime CEO of  the independent Freibank Music Publishing, initiated by the band Einstürzende Neubauten for which he also has worked as a manager. Always one foot in films, he produced and directed several music videos and documentaries (e.g. Einstürzende Neubauten: Liebeslieder) and acted as a music consultant for films which brought him the encounter with young film director Fatih Akin. While working on the Golden Bear-winner Head On (2004) they co-founded their own production company corazón international. They produced Akins next 5 features and documentaries as well as films of other directors. In 2013 Maeck founded his own film production company Interzone Pictures. His first production B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin premiered successfully at Berlinale 2015 and became a Berlin cult movie. His latest film All is one. Except 0. about the history of German computer hackers was released in 2021.