From tARTu With Love

Tartu is a vibrant student and university town that blossoms during the academic year but calms down in June when the town is filled with blissful silence, when most of the 12 000 students are gone. Still, there are almost 100 000 people left in town and the summers in Tartu can be as pleasant as anywhere. To bring Tartu to the centre of attention of the whole country, a special outdoor Love Film Festival tARTuFF was launched. On the one hand, it was to pay a tribute to Tartu, its romantic atmosphere and its inhabitants, and on the other, to welcome large numbers of tourists who could enjoy the town and colourful summer evenings on one of the most beautiful town hall squares in Estonia in the biggest Open Air Cinema ever created in the country. In 2009, tARTuFF welcomed 17000 visitors. For six days in mid-August, the Tartu Town Hall Square is turned into the cinema with 1000 chairs added to 500 seats available in the summer cafés. The twelve films that are screened during the festival aim to portray different facets of love. During its four year existence, tARTuFF has never been a festival of overly sweet love movies, but rather the one creating the feeling of spikes and sharp edges.

To further this reputation, a side programme on tolerance has been screened in the Tartu Conference and Cultural Centre Athena. The programme usually covers various topics such as race, cultural diversity, religion and environment. It takes a look at the current topics of the present-day world mainly through documentaries, but also by presenting a parallel selection of feature films - altogether 12 of them. All the pieces are introduced by the film makers and experts who also deliver open lectures and participate in different discussions prior to the screenings. 5^th Tartu Love Film Festival tARTuFF is held on 9 - 14 August 2010.