Werner Nekes (29 April 1944 – 22 January 2017) was a German experimental film director, and a collector of historical optical objects.
Together with Helmut Herbst, Thomas Struck, Klaus Wyborny and Heinz Emigholz, they founded the Filmmacher-Cooperative Hamburg.
In the early 1970s, Nekes had a professorship for experimental film at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg (1970-1972).
Nekes' collection of the archaeology of the moving image has been exhibited several times in notable museums around the world,[7] it appeared in books and exhibition catalogues, and was featured in the television series Media Magica (1996) and in Nekes' documentary Was geschah wirklich zwischen den Bildern?
The last project, so far, planned to show the collection in an old tower on the site of the former Landesgartenschau in Mülheim, where there Nekes built a camera obscura.