Specials

Soverview of the Program

becoming river

2-channel video projection (loop 20’) | MobiLab (Container) in Bürgerpark near Billetschen Schlösschen
May 13–16 2025 from 12:00 to 20:00 | Free admission

round Table: What do I still have to say to this world?

with Klaus Theweleit, Michaela Kobsa-Mark and Zaid Ghasib | May 15, 2025, 7:30 PM, Haal 8 | Free admission | Barrier-free access

What do I want to tell? In what form? What am I allowed to tell? And what is even worth telling?

Many older people think: “You can’t say anything anymore,” while the younger generation falls silent and wonders: “What do I still have to say to this world?” Cultural and film theorist Klaus Theweleit (*1942) discusses the unspeakable and the unheard with young filmmakers Michaela Kobsa-Mark and Zaid Ghasib.

In his decades-long engagement with fascism, Theweleit has intensely examined the deep psychological processes of repression and the resulting social structures. Authoritarian figures, embedded in both our cultural memory and our psychological power dynamics, drive us forward. Memories and experiences sink into the unconscious, like objects settling on the riverbed. However, they inevitably resurface, forcing their way back into our awareness. Klaus Theweleit describes the fascist male body using the metaphor of water. Floods, currents, or dirt threaten to overwhelm the rigid, controlled self, shaking its certainties. Through his thought-provoking text and image montages, we will engage in conversation with him.

The audience is warmly invited to join the discussion.

we all go up

Friday, May 19th. 4:00 pm, Haal 1

In a world in which happiness is fading, the greatest hope is the promise of a technological evolution of mankind towards a life without suffering in a virtual paradise. The pressure of these lifechanging circumstances is enormous and so even the disoriented Charlie has to decide whether he wants to continue roaming the earth or upload himself to the digital paradise.

Adrian Schwartz was born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1994. He began making films at the age of twelve. During his studies at Offenburg University of Applied Sciences and the Baden-Württemberg Film Academy, Adrian professionalized his cinematic work. The short film “Liebesstreifen” (Love Stripes) won the 2018 Federal Youth Film Prize and deals with the incapacity of young love. In his documentary “Im Reich des Squatters” (2020), Adrian examines the relationship between disgust and society using a case study. In his essay film “Innerer Kongo” (Inner Congo), he finds himself caught up in postcolonial discourse and interweaves his inner impressions with footage from his trip to the Congo. In his film work, Adrian focuses on ethnographic and psychographic interventions and concentrates on the development of counter-narratives. “We All Go Up” is his first feature-length film and his thesis at Offenburg University of Applied Sciences.

Past Events

March 15th 2025 6 p.m. FORUM Offenburg, Haal 8

Baldiga – Entsichertes Herz

Students of the HS Offenburg can get in free of charge if they present their Oskar, everyone else pays €5.00. Tickets are available directly from the Forum.

West Berlin, 1979. Jürgen Baldiga, son of a miner from Essen, has just arrived in the city and decides to become an artist. Working as a rent boy and cook, he writes poems and a diary. After learning that he has HIV in 1984, he discovers photography. He intends his images to stop time and capture reality. They reveal his friends and lovers, wild sex, life on the street and the camp queens from the SchwuZ gay club who become his adopted family. Oscillating between despair and desire, rebellion and the will to survive, Baldiga becomes a chronicler of the queer West Berlin subculture in the face of his own imminent demise. When he died at the age of 34 in 1993, he left behind thousands of photographs and forty diaries – a unique artistic legacy.

Using poetic diary excerpts, stark images and memories from companions, Baldiga – Entsichertes Herz depicts not only a ground-breaking photographer but also an AIDS activist and committed fighter against the stigmatisation of gay people’s lives.