Regenbogenfabrik

The Regenbogenfabrik ("Rainbow Factory") began as a squat: on 8 May 1981, thirty activists occupied a disused printing works at Lausitzer Straße 21-22 in Kreuzberg, part of the wider Berlin *Hausbesetzer* movement that produced dozens of self-managed collective houses in the early 1980s. The Regenbogen collective negotiated a lease with the Berlin senate in 1984 and bought the building outright in 2001. It remains a self-managed cooperative today. What's here: a queer- and feminist-forward cinema (35mm and DCP, 60 seats), a bike repair workshop that also teaches bike maintenance to Berlin's newer arrivals, a small hostel (twelve rooms) that's cheaper than any commercial equivalent and open to travellers, a café, and a rotating exhibition space. The cinema is where much of Berlin's queer film culture from the 1980s onwards was screened for the first time — early Praunheim, all the early Fassbinder, plus decades of pre-mainstream international queer cinema. The building itself is a small brick-fronted 1890s industrial workshop, restored gently. The courtyard between wings is a bike-fixing space by day and an open-air cinema in summer. Nothing about the place shouts — it's a lived-in, working, decidedly non-commercial institution that has survived Kreuzberg's gentrification largely because the cooperative owns its own walls. Free to visit the courtyard, café and shop; cinema tickets €5-7. Kottbusser Tor U-Bahn is 400 metres. Combine with SO36 (600 metres south) for the Kreuzberg night. This is Berlin queer heritage that's still operational — the point of visiting is to see continuity, not commemoration.