KATHARINA KASTNER

Katharina Kastner is an Austrian filmmaker working in Brussels and Vienna. She studied film at TISCH School of the Arts in NYC and Doc Nomads, a documentary film master travelling three European cities (Lisbon, Budapest and Brussels). Her experimental short film about a museum of contemporary art in Brussels, VILLA EMPAIN, builds upon concepts of psychogeography and draws a mental map of a space as it goes through time. Shot on s16mm, her observational portrait interacts with 8mm footage from the 1950’s Empain family archive, unearthing a subconscious of the space, as the echoes of the past reverberate in the present and infect our perception and experience of the museum. Katharina Kastner’s films are cross-overs of documentary, essayistic and experimental elements. Aspects of movement, fragility, fractures and invisible scars are at the core of her work. She is searching for traces, using the analogue camera to collect and explore inner and outer transformations. Impulses for her films are fragile environments and the people behind these. Her work has screened at Viennale, FID Marseille, IFFR Rotterdam, Cannes SFC, Visions du Reel Nyon, Underdox Munich, ISELP, Cinematek Brussels, Louvre Paris, True/False Film Fest, Diagonale, Go Shorts Nijmegen, Brussels Art Film Festival, Camden international Film Festival, Lund International Architecture Film Festival, MIDBO, American Documentary Film Festival, won an audience award at Nuevas Olas Film Festival and a cinematography award at NYFF. Her current project takes her back to her roots in Pöls, Austria.