Wilhelm Hein was born in 1942 in Duisburg and significantly shaped early experimental cinema with his long-term collaborator Birgit Hein (from 1966-1989). In 1968 he founded XSCREEN in Cologne as the first German institution of underground film distribution and presentation. Having worked with a large number of film makers over the years, his collection of films spans a great variety of works within the broader field of experimental, underground and “expanded” cinema.