Every year five days in the very beginning of November in a small Hanseatic League town Luebeck, which reminds of 20th century beginning Latvia’s postcards with cozy town environment all the paths brings you to the cinema. Passing by the circus ponies, stands of liquorices and waffles, kebab restaurants and marzipan shops and over the pond’ s bridge with flounced iron railing, which has dozens of bicycles locked by. Aside the pond rays of sunset pass over a swan and a cat that angrily hisses on each other.

This year Luebeck already warmed a little bit up for the next year when it is celebrating its 50 years anniversary since there are held the most notable Nordic Film Days outside the Nordic countries.

Charmed by the town every year filmmakers and film- consumers meet there. During the daytime the dive into the cinemas and during the evening they meet in one of the small Luebeck’s cafeterias. The most frequented of course is Theater Quelle. As you open the narrow entrance door you face a tiny room with dark walls generously covered with sallow photos of actors. Imagine dark tatty wooden tables, benches with scarce worn-out dark red velvet cushions and lamps with long fringes, a thick cloud of cigarette fume and the owner of it all – a middle-aged man with genial eyes and a long white moustache who serves every client as if he would be the only one there.

“Spring of theatre”- unnoticeable and greyish during the daytime is only opened at the evening and is closed only after the last guest has left- a small celebration with Latvians taking part in it has lasted till 7 a.m.

The hedonic nature of the local people is brightly revealed in the cinema –they would arrive more than a half an hour before the session with glasses of wine in their hands and leisurely find their seats and continue the conversations begun at the cafeteria of the first floor. Those who don’t prefer the wine bring big bottles of water and there is nobody noticed with sparkling drinks or popcorn. A traditional part of the procedure is finding the unoccupied seats -as the tickets don’t have any numbers shown, there are endless dialogues over the whole cinema hall usually concluded by jokes and long expressions of gratitude.

The Organizers of the Luebeck’s Nordic Film Days show a great respect to this warm festival’s atmosphere, carefully choosing films for the program-preferring the solid-ones and avoiding being a festival of arrant festival films. They mostly are professional dramas or films with a certain dose of Nordic humour.

It also offered documentaries, and a special program for children and the youth. The children arrived accompanied by their classmates and could make a photo with a sad polar bear who kept on dully moving his automatic head on a lemon-yellow sofa in the foyer.

At the Closing event Interfilm and the Baltic Jury made a great surprise both awarding the Swedish film- To Love Someone. Despite there have been different opinions about the best films of the film days this one –that reveals a psychological addiction of a woman to her oppressor-ex-husband- wasn’t even mentioned as the potential winner. The main prize of the Luebeck’s Nordic Film Days received theNorwegian film The Art of Negative Thinking that was highly estimated also in the festival of Karlovy Vary. The heroes of the film- pessimists beaten by the life – used a genuine invention called shitbag- they talked in it all the bad things that had been depressing them to be able continue thinking and talking only the positive.

I wonder if the filmmakers have already patented their device? If not, I can foresee a great commercial potential in the tired countries of the upper Europe. Though the Theater Quelle will be soon closed down- there is never enough tips left by the actors-the next year Luebeck as welcoming and cloudy will wait for its visitors to the Nordic Film Days 50th anniversary.

Sonora