With a sailing ship and a strong tailwind, this travelling film and environmental festival embarks on its two-month journey through international waters during July 2008!

Moving Baltic Sea aims to develop new ways of meeting cultural and ecological challenges in the Baltic Sea region together with young filmmakers, photographers, writers and environmentally committed young people. Bringing togtether the fields of culture and ecology will promote the emergence of creative strategies meant to meet challenges that do not stop at national borders.

At the heart of Moving Baltic Sea is a six-week tour by sailing ship in the summer of 2008. Six respective port towns host a four-day festival: Moving Baltic Sea sets sail from Rostock (Germany), moves on to Danzig (Poland) and Kaliningrad (Russia), stops over in Riga (Latvia) and Narva-Joessu (Estonia) and finally drops anchor in St. Petersburg (Russia). The sailing ship is a space for exchange and symbolises both the ecological aspect of the festival and the connection between the different countries through the Baltic Sea.

The project includes:

Open air screening
...of a short film programme on the topic "Stories from the Seaside" at a public place, including films from all Baltic Sea countries.

Opening party
... with local artists and musicians.

Panel discussion
... with political, environmental, media and culture representatives on the topic “Pollution in the Baltic Sea”.

Documentary film
... about the tour and the festival, with audience interviews and images from the voyage, produced on the move and screened at every festival stop.

48-hour film contest
...in which young filmmakers have two days to shoot their own short film on a local environmental topic. Each country team chooses its respective topic.

Creative writing and photography workshops
… for young journalists and photographers who will make contributions for the cultural magazine Plotki and an online tour diary.

Environment workshops
... aimed to develop courses of action and strategies to communicate environmental topics to the public. The approaches differ from tour stop to tour stop and range from creative environmental campaigns to animating environmental documentaries.

Closing Event
...with screening of the 48-hour films, an award ceremony for winning filmmakers, and presentation of workshop results.

Info-Centre on board the Lovis
...as a permanent centre of documentation with information, pictures and results of the previous tour stops.

Partners are responsible for the events in their countries and they are highly involved in all general decisions. The reason for cooperation is really simple – partners know much better about the circumstances in their country.

The project is mainly funded by the youth programme of the European Union (Action 5) and European Cultural Foundation. Besides this, all partners are responsible for closing the funding gap themselves. As a result, there are a lot of (smaller) national sponsors.

"We live in a globalised world and, as the world-economy works on a global level, the cultural sector should do the same. Cross-cultural cooperation strengthens the local identity and the awareness of the significance of one's own culture. It is a method against global mainstreamification of culture." (Janosch Dietrich, project leader)