It was the first real festival moment when the big open air screen was pulled up in the evening. With a beautiful sunset over the water and good music, 4000 square metres of harbour area suddenly appeared as a festival venue.

The screen is four to five metres, but it still looks tiny in front of two huge industrial cranes. Last time Moviemiento toured in Europe, the screen and a bar were the only things marking the festival setting. This time, there is a circular outer space tent and some enormous sunshades, with the sun burning down on it. A pool right in the middle, a massage area and a bunch of nice people cooking tasty food… Moving Baltic Sea is quite a cosy spot at the Rostock harbour.

It´s already a mix of people with different backgrounds, which I enjoy very much. A filmmaker came all the way down from Moscow to join us. Friends from Berlin and Hamburg dropped by, six young teams are battling in the 48-hours film competition, and of course there is the Rostock audience. It was kind of a smooth beginning yesterday; overall there were around 300 people here, enjoying the screening and during the night the open fire and the colourful lights everywhere on the setting. I very much liked it too – it only feels a little weird that the festival, which never seemed to come closer for nearly two years, is really getting on the move now.

We already had some accidents which sound quite impressive and which of course all of a sudden everybody on the festival knows about – Matti, our technician, hurt himself with a chainsaw (but he´s well again). An ex-GDR-Trabi broke down on the way to the festival, and one of our future sailors is not able to swim, which he told the crew during the check-in onto the Lovis.

The whole check-in was still very… new, as I don´t know anything about sailing so far (I assume this is the same for most of the others). Up to yesterday, I couldn´t even think of the festival and the ship as one real unit, but this is beginning to change now.