Collected wisdoms between Riga and Narva-Jõesuu

The last festival day started with a grey sky and constant rain pouring from above. As the hours passed by few hope was left to host the screenings and all the other open air festival activities planned for the evening. But at last minute it turned out that our lucky star was shining once again for us, as the clouds cleared up just in time and gave birth to a beautiful sunset. Again the results of the 48 hours film contest were quite entertaining, only that this time the participants were only between 15 and 17 summers old and it was their first experience ever handling a video camera. Everybody did a great job and the voting by the applause of the audience gave the judge a hard time. At last nobody went home with empty hands, one of the teams even won a trip to Finland and everybody was in party mood to start the silent disco once again… The cake and champagne served for farewell by our Estonian partner Kinobuss even made people dance on top of the Kinobuss Bus waving their hands in the air.
But all of the sudden the party ended, because there was a special surprise waiting for us: in the tradition of Kinobuss people we were invited to spend the last festival night all together in the Sauna. The place was rented exclusively for us until 5 o’clock in the morning, so it was quite an unusual experience for the German crew. Especially when being handed over a delicious bottle of “Aqua Vitalis” (a traditionally brewn Estonian liquor called Hanja) in the middle of a 90 degree sweating session. To cool down the naked bunch ran exited by the surprised receptionist heading directly to the sea. We can’t remember exactly how many times we repeated this, but for sure until we saw the sun rise announcing a new day at the Baltic Sea.

I participated for four days in the Moving Baltic Sea Festival.
I had a great opportunity to take part in different workshops. Most of all I liked the photography workshop where I had a chance during 2 hours to shoot nature pictures.
Also I liked to participate in the 48h contest. Especially I liked in filming that I can express my own thoughts & emotions.
The festival gave me inspirations and lots of positive experience. The whole event and the people were special. Now I have something to remember during the dark winter nights.
With gratitude,
Kaide-Liis

We had them all – the capitals of the Baltic Sea: Rostock, Gdansk, Kaliningrad, Riga. And now? Narva-Jõesuu. Narva-what? Before our sailing tour started I have never heard of this town at the Estonian-Russian border - now it feels like my living room. Everything is so cosy here, so close. Our festival is beautiful located right at the little harbour, everything is just around the corner – from the deck of the sailing ship we can look right into our Info-Tent onshore.

Some little boys turn up – desperate to help us decorating the festival area. Bikers on oldtime motorcycles appear, driving in a circle, once, twice and disappearing again, children build tiny wooden ships with sails out of newspaper and give them a swim on the Narva river, the kinobuss vikings dress into rabbit and fox and run into town to do some promotion - of course Garen joins them with the orange fork (this fork…if you haven’t read this blog before: the fork is with us! All the time! It was made during a workshop at our very first festival in Rostock….since then the fork walked around the Old Town of Gdansk, it met many Russians at the hangouts in Kaliningrad, it turned into an installation in Riga at the historical storehouse and today joined the carneval in Narva-Jõesuu. I think it saw more of the Baltic Sea region than anybody else of us).

We arrived in Narva-Jõesuu very early, one day before the festival. At 5 o’clock in the morning I was behind the stearing wheel shipping into Narva Bay – pitschnass – the rain streaming down my face, freezing because of the cold cold wind. „Noooooooo!“ I thought, „please, we need good weather! Everything is planned open-air…“ I fell into my bunk, tired, discouraged….but just some hours later the clouds disappear, the sky lightens up. The following evening we are already screening the film-program on the sail of the ship – something I believed never to come true, being soaking wet arriving in Narva-Jõesuu.

Thank you, Mr. Weather God! And thank you Narva-Jõesuu for welcoming us so warmly and turning the festival into this familiar happening….just like a party in a big big living room.

It’s already 10 o’clock in the morning when I finally open my eyes. I can see the grey sky and the rigging of Lovis. It takes some time until I realize we aren’t sailing, the sails are packed and the festival flag is waving in the wind. It’s the first day of the Narva-Joesuu festival, so I stretch my bones and get up.
Most of the people are already somewhere in Narva-Joesuu, preparing the Panel discussion, which is scheduled for 2 o’clock today. Focus of the discussion is the issue of energy consumption and production in Estonia and the whole Baltic region.. Seven specialists from local NGO’s and members of the Estonian parliament give input speeches on the present energy situation and on possible solutions for the future. All speeches are held in Russian, which is quite remarkable itself and due to the fact that more than 80% of the population in this region is of Russian nationality.
Although the participants are well prepared it seems, that really discussing with each other and finding a discourse is not yet very often practiced in Estonia. It is nevertheless obvious that especially when discussing the production and consumption of energy, the establishment of a discourse is the first important step to find a solution, acceptable for all stakeholders. In this context the “Top-down/bottom-up” approaches and the realization of a bottom-up approach in Estonia is discussed controversially during the panel discussion.
The film following the speeches shows how the bottom-up approach was established in Denmark, while promoting renewable energies in the 70ies and raises the question whether this can be transferred to Estonia. Even though an agreement on this can’t be found right away, in the end all the participants conclude that the process has just started and shall be continued in the future.

Friday morning at the lovis. The day seemed to be nice, lovely breakfast: fresh bread, out of the oven this morning, scrumble eggs and tasty warm chocolate. Everything looks perfect, exept the missing newspaper…. o no is it rain again? During the night the rain falls like a neverending shower. Wet clothes still reminding what happend. They are hanging all around. You can’t find an empty place.
We have to go on to Narva Jõesuu and for that we have to lift the anker. The sea isn’t deep only 7 meters, but the ankerchain is more than 21 meters long to hold the ship in position. A lot of people are needed to lift up the anker. You have to pull hard and fast. So its more fun to do it like a little sport contest. Who is the fastest? Who is the strongest? Who is a real anker hero? We have two big wheels which you have to pull to lift the anker. You can build two teams and than the game started. Actually you pull it together. This time we decided each person has to move the wheel 30 times. At the beginning 12 more or less motivated people standing in wind and rain and try to give their best. You pull hard and fast, but the ankerchain only move in small steps. It takes 30 minutes, blood, sweat and tears to lift the anker. But in the end you see happy faces, proud of their work. 24 hands maybe more have worked quit well.

KICKE

A big thanks to all the people involved in the project for the chance to stir up my mind with thoughts about the Baltic Sea and its problems and our individual responsibility for it.

Thanks also to the LOVIS team for the kind attitude on board of the ship, where I learned many new things including the sea-sickness.

Gunita