Lichtburg Oberhausen

The Lichtburg was built in 1930/31 by a company of four Oberhausen businessmen to plans by the architect Karl Kirschfink, a cinema-variety theatre with around 1,400 seats. Bombing destroyed it in 1943, and the replacement designed by Hanns Rütgers opened on Elsässer Straße on 13 May 1952 with 872 seats. A second hall, the Gloria, followed in the mid-1950s. Today there are five screens and about 850 seats in total, each hall fitted out separately. The Oberhausen Manifesto was read out here in February 1962, and since 1998 the house has been the festival centre of the International Short Film Festival. Under Petra Rockenfeller the programme combines current releases with a great deal of series work: European film evenings, documentaries with local partners, the queer Homochrom screenings, children's and school programmes. Regular screenings in our listings are in German.

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