Vienna’s Prater is an amusement park and a desire machine. No mechanical invention, no novel idea or sensational innovation could escape incorporation into the Prater. The diverse story-telling in Ulrike Ottinger’s film “Prater” transforms this place of sensations into a modern cinema of attractions. The Prater’s history from the beginning to the present is told by its protagonists and those who have documented it, including contemporary cinematic images of the Prater, interviews with carnies, commentary by Austrians and visitors from abroad, film quotes, and photographic and written documentary materials. The meaning of the Prater, its status as a place of technological innovation, and its role as a cultural medium are reflected in texts by Elfriede Jelinek, Josef von Sternberg, Erich Kästner and Elias Canetti, as well as in music devoted to this amusement venue throughout the course of its history.
Direction
Ottinger's magpie eye for impossible juxtapositions.
Editing
Centuries of footage stitched into one breathing organism.
Production
Text as texture: Canetti, Kästner, Jelinek layered like fairground barkers.
Director
Ulrike Ottinger
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Ottinger filmed during the Prater's 250th anniversary, capturing the park's transformation from Habsburg hunting ground to Weimar pleasure dome to postmodern simulacrum.
The film's 'cinema of attractions' thesis directly references Tom Gunning's film theory, making this a documentary about amusement parks that's secretly an academic manifesto about early cinema's roots in carnival spectacle.
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