Nordic Day 2019 was held on June 16 at Royal Danish Consulate General as a part of ShanghaiPRIDE Film Festival, an annual LGBT film festival, organized to support the local LGBTQ community.
Taking place from June 8 to 16, “the 2019 ShanghaiPRIDE Film Festival has evolved from an LGBTQ film screening night to a full-blown festival aiming to support Chinese filmmakers while bringing international LGBTQ cinema to Shanghai,” the festival’s website stated.
On the last day of the festival, the Nordic Day was presented as a part of the festival by Shanghai Pride together with the Nordic Consulates: Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway.
With more than 100 guests attending, this event marked the first time that the Nordic consulates co-organized a joint event with Shanghai Pride.
There were screenings of 11 short films from each Nordic country and a panel discussion named “Queer Lives: Nordic vs Shanghai” where representatives of the four Nordic countries were invited to take part as a panelist to compare the difference and similarity on queer lives in the Nordics and China as well as to share their personal experiences about LGBTQ community.
One of the guests invited by Consulate of Finland was a Finnish “So you think you can dance” winner and professional contemporary dancer Sam Vaherlthto who is currently living in Shanghai. Vaherlehto took this opportunity to share with the audience about his admiration to Shanghai for being a very safe place for the LGBTQ community.
