Kassablanca

Kassablanca is a cultural venue at Felsenkellerstraße 13a in Jena, Germany. It was founded in 1990 by Organisation Kultur e.V., which grew out of a cultural-policy group formed at a 1989 Bürgerforum. The first premises were a house on Villengang; the venue later moved to a former Tanzcafé in the Paradies area, leaving that site in 1993. In the years after reunification, Kassablanca gave refuge to people facing far-right violence and grew into an employer, training provider and youth social work organisation.

The current site occupies a former water tower and locomotive shed near Jena West station. The tower opened at the end of 1995, followed by the hall on 30 April 1997, and the grounds include railway sidings and old passenger, sleeper and freight carriages. The venue holds 600 people, and its programme covers concerts, club nights, cinema, readings, comedy, exhibitions and workshops, with music at its centre.

Black Channel began at the first premises in 1990 as an independent punk and ska disco and later became a dark-wave night with EBM and industrial. In the late 1990s resident DJ Robert Exaltics-Cutter ran the Technoid nights, with guests such as Robert Hood, Claude Young and Jeff Mills, and Gay House parties at the venue were tied to the formation of the Freude am Tanzen label in 1998. The association took the name Kassablanca e.V. in 2021.