Prater

“These places are miniature models of the world. The Prater is a model that has evolved over time, reflecting changing fashions and technology. The developments toward an urban society and then toward a global village, with its transformed living conditions, are particularly evident at the Prater.” (Ulrike Ottinger) PRATER is both a cultural history of the world’s oldest amusement park and a fascinating glimpse into the present-day embodiment of Vienna’s “wish machine”; it depicts the lives of carnival performers and international visitors of all generations, interweaving texts by Elfriede Jelinek, Josef von Sternberg, Erich Kästner, and Elias Canetti with sweeping camera movements. It becomes abundantly clear that the history of the Prater and Ulrike Ottinger’s body of work have something in common: the world is a stage, and the stage is the world. (mg)