Single-Channel Film/video
Project Description:
Kathedral uses the Chinese city of Ordos—built for 2 million people in inner Mongolia—as a parable about human greed. Built as an investment opportunity for speculators on the property market, the city remains mostly abandoned, even as housing prices continue to rise. Accompanied by a short story by German writer Michael Ende, Kaetner’s film explores the financial and communal ingredients that constitute (or fail to constitute) Ordo’s life as a city.
Kathedral uses the Chinese city of Ordos—built for 2 million people in inner Mongolia—as a parable about human greed. Built as an investment opportunity for speculators on the property market, the city remains mostly abandoned, even as housing prices continue to rise. Accompanied by a short story by German writer Michael Ende, Kaetner’s film explores the financial and communal ingredients that constitute (or fail to constitute) Ordo’s life as a city.
Biography:
Kästner was born in Leipzig, East Germany in 1984. After graduating from high school in 2003, he worked as assistant at the Leipzig theatreand following that he went to South Africa from 2003 to 2005 to work as assistant director, DOP and researcher for iKhaya Films Cape Town. Käster then worked as assistant director for commercials at Velocity Films Africa and began working on several documentaries of his own. In 2005 he enrolled at the German Academy for Film and Television in Potsdam Babelsberg to study as a director and graduated in 2011. Kästner currently works as a freelance director for documentary films and visual artist for German theatres and spends the rest of his time in Berlin.