CHOREO DANCE FILM FESTIVAL

THE CRISES

MOVE US

THIS YEAR PRESENTS

13 FILMS

11 COUNTRIES

1 WORKSHOP AND 2 PANEL DISCUSSIONS

OFFERED BY BRILLIANT

FILMMAKERS

SCHOLARS

DANCERS

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH FESTIVAL DU COURT-MÉTRAGE DE CLERMONT-FERRAND

Ch o re o Da nc e Film Festival (CDFF) Founded in 2022, CDFF is the first global platform for dance film organized by Choreomundus Alumni, dedicated to cultivating a new generation of empowered dance filmmakers with a background in dance research.

With generous support from the European Union through the Erasmus+ Student and Alumni Alliance (ESAA), CDFF centers the 2022 theme on The Crises That Move Us to invite a rethinking of the socio-political relations between dance and the environment, and perhaps a re-elaboration of the term environment itself. Through a firm belief in diversity, equity, and inclusion, CDFF embraces the challenge to open the platform for unseen bodies and unheard voices—dancing and telling stories about the change they want to be in these unprecedented times we live in.

to Professor ANDRÉE GRAU

(1954 – 2017)

Dedicated

Ch o re o Da nc e Film Festival (CDFF) promotes the diversity of dance cultures through film and media, assembling an encounter of aesthetic proposals encompassing a wide array of skills, perspectives and knowledge. We aim to bridge the gap between dance and film while opening an innovative space to promote Dance as Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH). This year, we bring together communities from all over the world with a special focus on those whose living environment has been threatened by the climate change crisis humanity is experiencing.

Two years ago, a student asked me for my best advice about living in the present moment. The pandemic has made me realize that we live for one another. The best way you can feel that you are alive and useful is to help somebody. In return, one has to accept help from others whenever offered because it is also a way of letting other people stay alive, letting other people feel that they still live.

The spirit of lending a helping hand, of working together, of collaborating is truly flourishing in this year’s reunion of Choreomundus alumni, faculty, and staff. Who would have thought that a graduate programme on dance heritage would celebrate its tenth anniversary after its establishment in 2012. With my fellow conveners, the late Andrée Grau, Georgiana Gore, and László Felföldi, I believe that dancing gives a safe way of being around people, of interacting socially, of experiencing flow and excitement, a feeling that our whole being is moved.

And so, I am very pleased to welcome you to experience the flow and let the excitement linger throughout the three-night film festival that our hardworking Choreomundus alumni have prepared for us! While we screen the films, let the Choreo Dance Film Festival serve as a reminder that learning about dance is one way of recognizing the value of dance for the community. I hope that these dance films will also communicate the equal value of all human beings and their cultures.

Professor Emeritus, Department of Music

Norwegian University of Science and Technology

First coordinating Convener of Choreomundus

Shanny Rann Festival Director

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Pamela Santana Festival Co-Director

Dear Choreomundus family and dance-film lovers,

We would like to extend our warmest welcome for you to join us for the first Choreo Dance Film Festival in Clermont-Ferrand, France this year!

You will find in this program the assemblage of global teams that make up this festival: The organizing committee, the external jury, the program schedule and the official selection for CDFF 2022 featuring directors, producers, choreographers and dancers from all over the world.

As directors of CDFF, we cannot overstate how proud we are to produce this festival that is born out of a pandemic crisis. Despite the challenges of isolation, CDFF has brought our organizing committee closer together across time zones and cohorts. We have worked tirelessly for eight months with international alumni, guiding current students and recent graduates in a mentorship scheme built upon the goal of passing on the baton in two years’ time for the continuation of the Festival.

Thirteen films produced or directed by Choreomundus alumni have been carefully chosen as CDFF 2022 Official selection. The CDFF Grand Jury Award Film was selected in consultancy with an external jury team consisting of four established dance filmmakers from Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America.

On behalf of the Choreo Dance Film Festival, we invite you to come and join us in-person and online.

Shanny Rann Festival Director

Pamela Santana Festival Co-Director

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“

Sumedha Bhattarcharyya Festival Curators

Temi Ami-Williams Festival Curators

Davi Kopenawa Yanomani, shaman and leader of the Yanomani indigenous tribe of , as a term, is not ours. He suggests thinking of the environment as a whole, as nature, as ecology and not in separate parts - “We defend the forest’s trees, hills, mountains, and rivers; its fish, game, spirits, and human In current times of radical uncertainty, emergent crises and chaos, we have sought for ways to enliven our spirit of experimentation. The word ‘environment’ brings memories and associations to our localised socio-political situation, culture and people within our bodies. As artists and scholars, we inquire on the understanding of the word environment inviting multiple lenses to engage in mutual interconnectedness.

For our first edition, we have centered the theme around the environmental crisis, inviting a rethinking of the relations among politics and the environment, as well as re-elaboration of the term environment itself. Therefore, we have challenged the participants of these films to relate to embodiedness as a possibility to address/represent/inquire on such crises ‘staying in the trouble’ as Donna Haraway states.

We are asking how can dance be environmental and, therefore, political? How can the form of the environment inform the shape of dance as we practice it? How can we create a dialogue between body, land, trees, and cultural memories? How can we contextualise experiment environmentally, or environment experimentally? How can we get a transcendental experience of the realm of dance and film together, encompassing the violence, migrations and precariousness of life from the viewpoint of embodied

Temi Ami-Williams Festival Curators

Sumedha Bhattarcharyya Festival Curators

TEAM

Shanny is a dance anthropologist, editor, choreographer and cultural producer. Originally from Penang, Malaysia, she grounds her artistic projects in the island way of living and the celebration of cultural diversity. She brings people together through practices that bridge the body and mind, tradition and contemporary, movement and stillness. Shanny sits on the board of International Tristar Taiji Association and Operating Committee for Dance as Intangible Cultural Heritage. She continues to learn, perform and teach on the ancestral lands known as Vancouver, Canada, where she resides.

Shanny R ann Director

Pamela is a Peruvian dance artist, researcher and teacher with a background in contemporary dance and physical theatre. She is a Bachelor in Performing Arts and holds an M.A in ChoreomundusInternational Master in Dance Knowledge, Practice and Heritage. Currently, she teaches at the Performing Arts Faculty at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru. She runs the dance podcast SaberEsDanza, a platform for researching and disseminating dances that highlights the diversity of dance forms within the Peruvian context. Her research areas are the anthropological and ethnochoreological study of dances and the intersections between gender and performance in Latin American dance practices.

Pamela S antana Co-Director

Sumedha is an India-based interdisciplinary dance artist, researcher, educator, dance filmmaker and a primary caregiver, curious about expanding the potential of camera, traditional dance, mythology and gender. Her practice is thus formulated in a quest to understand what happens in the in-betweens, in the happening, unfolding of a choreographic process. She is currently pursuing her doctoral studies in Spatial Arts at Jindal School of Art and Architecture, with a research focus on understanding the relationship between the woman and the machine (camera)interests including surveillance, memory, space and spectatorship. She is also the founder of her initiative of evolving research-creation lab Duet with Camera and a member of a collective space in New Delhi, Khuli Khirkee.

Sumedha B hattacharyya Curator

Temi is a culture enthusiast and creative entrepreneur (actor, voice-over artist, costume designer, and dance researcher), She is the Chief Creative Officer at Unteamed Nigeria and Creative Director at New Wine Studios. Temi is also the first Nigerian actress in history to win a prize at Africa’s most prestigious film festival, the Pan African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) as the winner for Best Young Actor from West Africa 2021 for Eyimofe. Presently she is an Erasmus Mundus Scholar with the Choreomundus master's program and is experimenting on the role of motion capture as a tool for preserving and transmitting African intangible cultural heritage. Temi also serves as Choreomundus Programme Representative (PR) in the Erasmus Mundus Alumni Association (EMA).

María is, above everything, a nomad. Bachelor in Performing Arts and Social Sciences as well as member of Choreomundus Alumnae Board, she worked in 2018 for the programme as Communications Manager in UCA France, where she acquired a nice toolkit to deal with international and interinstitutional affairs, developing this work in 4 languages: English, French, Spanish, and Italian. Currently María is part of the coordinating team of the hispanic webinar Multílogos. She coaches dancers, art students and general public in her platform Consejería de Prácticas Corporales, besides her artistic practice characterized by the multicultural transdiscipline.

Sriradha is an India based performer specialised in Odissi dance for more than two decades, independent researcher, dance educator and curator. She has extensively performed in India and abroad (US, UK, Sri Lanka, China, Hungary, Bhutan and South Korea) in solo and group category.She holds a master degree in Geography. She has worked with the inmates at Cherlapally jail, Hyderabad and worked closely with the survivors of human trafficking under US Consulate, Kolkata. Her recent interests are in the Indian temple sculptures and the journey from freezing bodies to moving. Recently she received an Indo-Pacific grant from US Consulate and will be heading the project and working with two Indonesian artists.

Temi A mi-Williams Curator

María P eredo Guzmán Logistics Director

Sriradha P aul Logistic Expert

Kavya I yer Marketing Director CAA Vice President

Originally from Kolkata, India, Kavya is a passionate dancer and artist, interested in the intersections of movement, culture, the body and society. She currently works as a cultural researcher at the Art X Company, an arts consultancy in Mumbai. She also freelances as a yoga teacher and choreographer in Kyoto (Japan), where she now lives. Trained primarily in the Indian classical dance form of Bharatanatyam for 23 years, she has explored other genres such as Kathak, Bhangra, and Contemporary. Kavya actively participates, curates and organises festivals and symposiums to question the relevance of dance in our world today. She is the Vice President of the Choreomundus Alumni Association.

Maria (Masha) is a performance artist and dance researcher of Ukrainian origin whose nomad lifestyle was reinforced due to the war in Ukraine. Her artistic background is primarily in Fusion Belly Dance and includes experience in playback theater, other dance styles and different somatic practices. Her educational background is MA in Geopolitics and Political Geography and MA in Dance Anthropology. Maria’s research interests can be divided in two big topics: Fusion Belly Dance history and socio-cultural aspects, and USSR propaganda in dance and performance arts. Currently Maria is more focused on the latter topic and working on the research project “Dance Politics in Socialist Countries during Early Cold War” in the Open Society Archives in Budapest.

Maria K ardash Marketing Expert

C

Outreach Director CAA President

Natasa uses dance to approach music and she promotes intercultural dialogue through performing arts. She specialises in dance anthropology and ethnochoreology and she focuses on traditions that use the voice and the body to produce music (body music, body percussion, tap dance and more). She has participated in projects that promote inclusiveness and as a researcher of the European Network Against Racism (E.N.A.R.). Other projects towards community building and intergenerational work are: MoAM-Moving Around Music, Athens Tap Jam, Body Music Studygroup, as well as her active role at Anasa Cultural Center (GR) and International Body Music Festival (USA). Natasa collaborates with artistic groups, minority groups, schools and institutions. She is currently the Chair of the Choreomundus Alumni Association (CAA).

Natasa

hanta-Martin

Beatriz is a researcher, dance artist, and writer. She lives in Guatemala City where she developed her poetry work. As a dancer, her body practices turn around ballet, modern dance contact improvisation and yoga. She has published her research about contact improvisation, dance phenomenology, multicultural performance practices, and Guatemala's contemporary dance scene. She is member of the coordinating team of the webinar "Multílogos: Danzas, cuerpos y movimientos". Beatriz is currently evaluating the methodological possibilities of participatory action research and digital anti-racist pedagogies for researching traditional games as intangible cultural heritage with Caja Lúdica in Guatemala.

Lenin is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher from Costa Rica passionate about social impact through art. Bachelor in dramatic arts from the Universidad de Costa Rica, he has had vast experience as a performer, director and producer in multiple styles of theater, dance, Butoh and has acted in commercials for television and mini series. Helped to co-curate the participation for Choreomundus cohort 10 in Multiplié dance festival in Trondheim, Norway. Has experience in modeling and hosting radio and tv programs in Costa Rica. Has experience guiding acting processes in different styles of theater. Currently is pursuing the Choreomundus master’s in Dance Knowledge Practice and Heritage and is very interested in the relations between dance/theater, gender, sexuality and sport.

Bryan is an assistant professor at the University of the Philippines Diliman and handles theatre and performance studies courses both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. A theatre practitioner, he has participated in creative projects as managing director, production and stage manager, dramaturg, and Noh performer. He has written essays and book chapters about dance ritual, cultural performance, protest theatre in the Philippines, and performance archive. Employing an interdisciplinary approach, he researches on ethnochoreology or anthropology of dance and critical heritage studies. His current research focuses on commemoration and performance of collective memories of the Filipino-American War in Marinduque island, Philippines. Viray is currently pursuing a PhD at the Australian National University.

Beatriz Herrera Communications Director

Lenin Quesada Communications Expert

Bryan Levina Viray Production Director

jury

Paramita Saha

Paramita is a performer, curator, and arts manager working out of Kolkata. Co-Director of Artsforward for the last 12 years. Paramita works with artists and the creative community to build moving messages for social change. She is deeply engaged in the field of environment, audience development for the arts, nurturing and supporting creativity, capacity building and artistic ability in the youth, curating, and designing creative art projects.

Anna Alexandre

Anna is a producer, artistic director and author. She runs DAN.CIN.LAB, an artistic platform dedicated to projects crossing dance and image around societal issues. Anna is also leader of mAPs - migrating Artists Project, a groundbreaking process created with DAN.CIN.LAB, Coorpi, Tanzrauschen, Malakta and MØZ, around a short-film collection about POWER with the support of Creative Europe released in 2022. She launched the same year the first international production company dedicated to societal dance film and innovative contents, DAN.CIN.FILMS, based in Pôle Pixel, the French cluster for cultural and creative industries.

Esteban Richmond Umaña

Esteban is a movement artist, researcher and multimedia creator. His artistic works focuses on the body and its multimedia potential, working as a director, screenwriter, editor, dancer and choreographer. His work emphasizes the genres of dancefilm, documentary and expanded video. He is part of the collective Tierra Púrpura, a creative community that operates as a space for convergence and exploration; building from transdisciplinarity in diverse artistic, cultural and audiovisual productions. He directed the dance film documentary Waak and Danz (2020), featuring dance artists from Limón, Costa Rica.

Arie Esiri

Film Maker, Co-Founder of Kimiera. Arie worked in the camera departments of several projects ranging from Audi to Vivienne Westwood and the BBC. He has a Master's of Fine Arts from Columbia University in New York. He has collaborated with his brother Chuko, co-directing their short Goose, which played at the 2017 LA Film Festival. He also produced Chika Anadu’s AMAA and AFI Fest award winning feature B for Boy. His work as a director has been featured on Vogue and Essence.com. His debut feature film Eyimofe premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2020 and was released theatrically in Nigeria.

AUGUST 28th.2022

Sunday 7-10PM

La jetée

Clermont-Ferrand FRANCE

Opening Speeches

Promotional film video

Screening of films

Rose of Winds

by María Peredo Guzmán Finland

Stepping Into Machine by Jorge

Poveda Yánez United Kingdom

Caged by Lucia Rua Bustamante Peru

From Within by María José

Bejarano Costa Rica

Panel discussion

Rose of Winds

by María Peredo Guzmán

Finland

Rose of winds is a research project about the relationships between human and non-human beings, framed in open spaces. We inquire into the dialogues of one's own body with the body of mother earth, in an effort to recover the magnitude of the environment and experience it through photography and movement. The first turning point, North, is located in the forest of Hartola-Finland, and concentrates on a single urgent gesture: Embracing. This is the third collaboration between Daniel Oros and María Peredo Guzmán

Rose of winds was part of the Official Selection at Cuerpo Digital 2021, receiving the biggest number of visits online during the festival in Bolivia.

Concept and performance: María Peredo Guzmán (Bolivia)

Camera and Edition: Daniel Oros (Bolivia-Finland)

Production: Exilio Studio

Stepping Into Machine

by Jorge Poveda Yánez United Kingdom

With the advent of cognitive automation services, an aesthetic and kinetic gap is inaugurated for human dancers. The presented case of the ‘bionic step’ is an illustration of how permeable dance cultures are to technological developments, and how these in turn have shaped a new canon for how movement is performed, across digital spaces, bodies/avatars and in front of our phones and while stepping into our machine selves. While machines keep progressing in their quest to understand ‘feelings’, they leave behind a trace of images and movement that are constantly reincorporated by human performers to engage in choreography as a medium.

Producer: Jorge Poveda Yánez (Ecuador)

Director: Nina Davies (Canada)

Caged

by Lucia Rua Bustamante Peru

When you feel trapped in your own skin. Our bodies express all limitations and possibilities at once as an attempt to dig deeper, to find new escape paths into your skin, your bones, your muscles, every vein and every tissue, and in this process different landscapes appear, as a promise of liberation. Each body is a context, each body is a landscape in constant transformation. Carried out during the period of confinement in Lima, Peru (2020).

Director: Lucia Rua Bustamante (Peru)

From Within

by María José Bejarano Costa Rica

Four chapters about women, body and territory. These are concepts always changing and in dialogue, modifying each other. The work narrates the process taken by the community dance group in Los Santos, Costa Rica.

Director: María José Bejarano (Costa Rica)

SCREENING

AUGUST

Monday 7-10PM

Espace municipal Georges Conchon

Clermont-Ferrand FRANCE

Screening of films

Szeged

Ella, a Female Morion by Bryan

Rested Community by Amin Parvin Iran

Twilight Chants by Joko

Panel discussion

Viray Philippines

Sudibyo Indonesia

Eegun

by Temi Ami-williams Nigeria

Eegun Szeged

by Temi Ami-williams

Nigeria

This film is the first cut of a more extensive ethnographic film that was carried out as an experiment in Szeged, Hungary by four foreign dance anthropologists who studied at the university of Szeged for nine months. They were constantly made to know and feel that they were the ‘other’ due to the rather rude staring culture in Hungary, and because of this discovered that there is a way one is perceived by others and in response, how one perceives oneself based on this. This film highlights how foreign people are termed “exotic” and stared at ‘strangely’ for their hair, fashion style, accent and skin color but stared at in appreciative amazement and awe when dressed as masquerades and parading round the city of Szeged.

Director: Temi Ami-williams (Nigeria)

Rested Community by

Amin Parvin Iran

A place in the middle of an ever changing city, but frozen in time. We embodied the qualities of decomposing, reshaping, growing, shrinking. We let the stillness fill our bones and time to leave its traces. Starting this project with a few questions in our heads, we finished it with many more, and we aim to provoke some within our audiences. How can we, the overground walking community, relate to the underground resting community? How can we transform, encapsulate, and work with the traces, by means of movements? Searching for heritage, we made a journey into our bodies and traveled through time. Three foreigners, we reached to our ancestors and found them resting among buildings, few meters below our feet.

Directors:

Amin Parvin (Iran)

Lara Bakhssar (Syria)

Aleksandar Isailovic (Serbia)

Ella, a Female Morion

by Bryan Viray Philippines

Ella Mazon shares her “panata” (vow) in wearing a mask, an uncommon story in a male-dominated Moryonan in Marinduque island, Philippines. One of the featured documentaries of Tuloy Po! project, this film is produced by the Likha-an Resource Center under the auspices of the Philippine National Commission for Culture and the Arts, Intramuros Administration, and Office of Deputy Speaker and Congresswoman Loren Legarda. Director: Bryan Viray (Philippines)

Twilight Chants

by Joko Sudibyo Indonesia

The change will happen. Change is a divine mystery. Change makes us realize that we will surely return to the creator no matter how far we go.

Directors:

Joko Sudibyo (Indonesia) and

Galih Suci Manganti (Indonesia)

AWARD CEREMONY

AUGUST 30th.2022

Tuesday 7-10PM

Espace municipal Georges Conchon

Clermont-Ferrand FRANCE Screening of films

Stuck in Liminality Valentina Polkovnikova Moldova

Secret of the Blessed Diego Marín Mexico

Piangua Traditional Dance Colombia

Diana Gutiérrez

Colombia

Atrateño Privileged Dance

Diana Gutiérrez

Colombia

Limas Utopicas

Moyra Silva

Peru

Award Ceremony

Ending Ritual

(Cohort 10 dance performance)

Cocktail Party

Stuck in Liminality

Valentina Polkovnikova

Moldova

Imagine going through a ritual when the liminality seems to never end. That is what the film captures, the feeling of uncertainty due to the extended transitional phase. It was created during the nationwide lockdown in South Africa, where I accidentally got stuck. It was supposed to be only a short stay on the way back to China but ended up being a year of being stuck in liminality.

Director:

Valentina Polkovnikova (Moldova)

Piangua Traditional Dance Colombia

Diana Gutiérrez Colombia

The Piangua Dance represents a very beautiful work of the women of the Colombian Pacific who embark and go to the mangroves to sell this product to seek the sustenance of their families. The pianguada is a task that has been carried out for many years by the Afro-descendant population of the Colombian Pacific and is a very exquisite dish that is typical of the Pacific Colombian region.

The idea was to honor those women and leaders who have carried out such a beautiful work in the territory.

With the support of The Environmental Dance Project.

Producer:

Diana Gutiérrez (Colombia)

Director:

Julio Cesar Portocarrero (Colombia)

Secret of the Blessed Diego Marín Mexico

An elite group secretively gathers to ritualize the arrival of an enigmatic message that promises blessing.

Director: Diego Marín (Mexico)

Atrateño Privileged Dance

Diana Gutiérrez Colombia

In our dance, the majestic Atrato River is highlighted as a survival mechanism for the riverine population of Chocó. The peasants work in the field using everyday materials as a means for their substance. In the first moment, the champa, the boat and the canoe are shown as aquatic means of transportation that are of great importance for our inhabitants. In the second moment, the rubbing of our peasants is shown as a work that is usually done to collect food, to plant food or even to hunt. With the support of The Environmental Dance Project.

Producer:

Diana Gutiérrez (Colombia)

Director:

Bismark Salas (Colombia)

Limas

Utopicas Moyra Silva Peru

The film explores our particular interpretation of “utopia” as a starting point and trigger to defy, with movements, Lima city’s status quo. Fifteen Limeñxs– representing a wide variety of ages, occupations and socio-cultural backgrounds– express their visions of utopia using their bodies and group compositions in this site-specific video dance piece. Working collectively, we explored how to challenge, in small and varied ways, different aspects of the urban status quo in Lima– a city slowly overcoming and redefining a traumatic past with terrorism and public spaces. The video features collective movement and sound compositions created by Fournet and Silva in collaboration with the fifteen workshop participants.

Directors: Moyra Silva (Peru) and Adele Fournet (EEUU)

CDFF Official Selection Films

85 submissions | 34 countries | 13 selected films | 3 awarded films

Thirteen films were selected as CDFF 2022 Official Selection and three will be awarded with the Grand Jury Film, CDFF Award and Audience Choice Award. The films were carefully chosen based on their artistic merit and unique approach towards the environmental theme of CDFF 2022: The crises that move us. The official selection films are distinctive, compelling and well-balanced in featuring dance on cinema. The Grand Jury Prize exhibits overall excellence in the craft of dance filmmaking and responds in a new way to the environment as a theme.

What is the relationship between dance and cinema… between the body and the image?

Artistic director of ChoréACtif, Clotilde Amprimoz, will guide participants through a collaborative and hands-on workshop for making screendance together. The purpose is to share a creative moment of learning about ourselves and others while exploring different approaches of screendance, film and dance.

In two hours, participants will have the opportunity to reinterpret cinema from a choreographic point of view and cultivate an interest in the empathy of movement, the delicate relationships between our body, our perception, our emotions and the images that shape us internally and externally.

Clotilde Amprimoz

Working with the fields of contemporary dance, image and music, Clotilde Amprimoz has been designing and participating in choreographic and cinematographic projects since 2001. She is an activist in the collaborative process of creation by realization of artistic projects with territories or people excluded from art and culture. She promotes in these collaborative creations the development of everyone through emotion and artistic achievement. Her collaborative creations in a slow-down process, produced by ChoréACtif association in "Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes" region, enhance the material and immaterial heritage, especially human one (work, memory/ies, links between people and environment...), Homo Laborans (2011-2018), Shores (2013-2020), My Heritage, are you alive in #Thiers? (2016-2018), Smith'project (2019-2020). Clotilde has been invited to events, workshops or conferences to talk about dance and image by different institutions, universities and festivals.

CREDITS

Festival Art & Visual design

Cle Delgado

Video Editor Navya Sah

Website design

Inspiren Network Sdn. Bhd.

W e thank all our sponsors and partners for making CDFF a success

Funded by the European Union

film festival