Villa Empain
ABOUT
"Memory is a shifting, fading, partial thing, a net that doesn't catch all the fish by any means, and sometimes catches butterflies that don't exist" - Rebecca Solnit The film VILLA EMPAIN draws a mental map of a space, as it goes through time. Concrete marble, brick and steel: little else made by human hands seems as stable, as immutable, as a building. Yet the life of any structure is neither fixed nor timeless. Outliving their original contexts and purposes, buildings are forced to adapt to each succeeding age. To survive, they must become shapeshifters. Villa Empain’s atmosphere is strange and full of wonders. The camera touches gently upon textures as if to glimpse the moments they witnessed, to read the inner meaning of time. There is a secret to unveil but as with every good secret it evades us, it is elusive, we can never grasp it. The entire film is the attempt to find out about something that we cannot put our fingers on. So we put our fingers on wood, water, marble instead, and feel.
(please feel free to only choose only parts of it) Katharina Kastner is an Austrian documentary film director based in Brussels. Her interest in individual and political transformations, has led her to gain a Bachelor in International Relations and Psychology in Vienna before graduating from Doc Nomads, a mobile film school taking place in Budapest, Lisbon and Brussels. After working as a researcher, production manager and assistant director for fiction features, documentaries and in advertising, she set out to direct her first short documentary VILLA EMPAIN, which hast since been screened at international festivals, galleries and is currently to be seen at MUBI. Her work is influenced by fragile environments and the people behind these. "I am inspired by fragility, fractures and invisible scars. I'm searching for traces, using the camera to collect and explore processes of inner and outer transformations."
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