The MANUAL CINEMA Blog

A Chicago based cinematic shadow puppet company. www.manualcinema.com

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#PeterPanBeijing #ManualCinema #ShadowPuppets #ShadowAnimation

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#PeterPanBeijing

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Manual Cinema at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival #AdaAva

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MANUAL CINEMA is a Chicago-based performance collective, design studio, and film/ video production company that combines handmade shadow puppetry, cinematic techniques, and innovative sound and music to create immersive stories for stage and screen. Using vintage overhead projectors, multiple screens, puppets, actors, live feed cameras, multi-channel sound design, and a live music ensemble, Manual Cinema transforms the experience of attending the cinema and imbues it with liveness, ingenuity, and theatricality. American Theatre Wing's Working in the Theatre series is nominated for a 2016 #Webby Award for Documentary: Series. We are so proud of this special series and hope you will vote for us here: http://bit.ly/23dtb2i For more information on Manual Cinema, please visit http://www.manualcinema.com For more information on the American Theatre Wing, please visit http://www.americantheatrewing.org

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Manual Cinema has extend out NYC run by one week! Grab your tickets now!

https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/cal/1401/1433131200000

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Manual Cinema Presents

ADA|AVA A Co-Production with The Tank.

“…one of the most engaging things I had seen in ages.” – Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune

“The most creative thing you’ve seen all year” – Jaime Robinson, Fast Company

“Ingenious multimedia performance” – David Cote, Future of Storytelling

Directed by Drew Dir Sound Design and Original Score by Kyle Vegter and Ben Kauffman Designed by Drew Dir, Sarah Fornace, and Julia Miller Puppeteering By Kara Davidson, Sam Deutsch, Drew Dir, Sarah Fornace and Julia Miller Music performed by Maren Celest, Michael Hilger, and Kyle Vegter

About the Show Bereaved of her twin sister Ava, septuagenarian Ada solitarily marks time in the patterns of a life built for two. However, a traveling carnival and a trip to a mirror maze plunges her into a journey across the thresholds of life and death. Set in a landscape of the New England gothic, Ada/Ava uses a story of the fantastic and super natural to explore mourning and melancholy, self and other. Learn more.

Check out a VIDEO PREVIEW.

- June 16th - July 5th At 3LD Art & Technology Center - Studio B -

TICKETS HERE. 

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Manual Cinema’s first short feature film Chicagoland goes live today! 

CHICAGOLAND follows a lone urban coyote in search of sustenance for herself and her pups while navigating the perils of the Chicago landscape, both man-made and natural. Traveling from the perimeter of the city into its center, we see through her eyes a Chicago where the boundaries of “nature” and “city” are permeable; a Chicago where the wild and the urban intermingle. With striking visuals in silhouette, and a propulsive original score, CHICAGOLAND tells a timely story about the unseen wildness of our cities, and the animals that also call it home.

In addition to the film, Manual Cinema offers an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film, including interviews with urban wildlife experts, photographs of Manual Cinema’s puppeteers on set, and video of award-winning percussionist Matthew Duvall (eighth blackbird) recording the musical score.

CHICAGOLAND was produced with a grant from the Chicago Digital Media Production Fund, a project of Voqal administered by Chicago Filmmakers. The film is directed by Ben Kauffman. The puppet design is by Lizi Breit and Drew Dir. The original score is by Kyle Vegter and performed by Matthew Duvall. Puppeteering is by Sam Deutsch, Sarah Fornace, and Julia Miller.

Visit chicagolandfilm.net/about.html for a look behind the scenes and interviews with Chicago urban wildlife professionals.

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Join Manual Cinema May 7th for Shadowbox 2015!

Help support our run of Ada|Ava in NYC this summer!

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Join Manual Cinema as we celebrate the season May 7 with h’ors d’oeuvres, drinks, and a ONE NIGHT ONLY performance of Show & Tell, our 30-minute cinematic shadow puppetry/ live music/ heartbreaking StoryCorps storytelling extravaganza. VIP guests arrive early to catch our never-before-seen video adaptation of Betty Jenkin’s incredible blow up bra, South American adventure.

Buy your tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/shadowbox-a-manual-cinema-benefit-event-featuring-our-collaboration-with-storycorps-tickets-16234328313

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The New Yorker 

MARCH 9, 2015 ISSUE

Spring Preview

BY RUSSELL PLATT

One of the most intriguing productions this spring combines early and contemporary music while mixing in elements of opera, film, and sound art.“La Celestina,” a collaboration between the production company Erratica, the composer Matt Rogers, and the Chicago puppetry company Manual Cinema, is a fantastical exploration of the shadowy sexual intrigue of Fernando de Rojas’s fifteenth-century Spanish novel. It will be projected in twenty-minute loops on the walls of the Metropolitan Museum’s Vélez Blanco Patio (March 20-29).​ ♦

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/09/spring-preview-classical-philharmonic

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Shadows cast on a screen tell the moving story of Manual Cinema’s ‘Lula del Ray’

In September, the Chicago-based theater troupe Manual Cinema traveled to Tehran for a puppet festival, armed with seven overhead projectors.

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With puppets, projectors and live performances, Manual Cinema creates surreal movies as the audience watches the process unfold.

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Manual Cinema performed Lula del Ray inside an old imax theatre in Arlington, VA!

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Rehearsal photos of Mementos Mori by Marc Perlish

Mementos Mori Premieres at the MCA, Chicago Jan 15th-18th, 2015

Purchase tickets: http://experience.mcachicago.org/single/PSDetail.aspx?psn=59

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Happy New Year from Manual Cinema!

We are already hunkered down in the sub-zero temperatures of 2015 here in Chicago, but we wanted to take a moment and wish you a belated happy and healthy holiday season and new year!

Manual Cinema was hard at work in 2014. Some of the highlights of the year for us include:

Creating SHOW AND TELL, a live show based on audio stories from NPR's StoryCorps, in which many of our company members designed and directed for Manual Cinema for the first time. 

Performing Lula del Ray in Chicago and Detroit with a new cast of puppeteers and musicians.

Creating two music videos for Sony Masterworks, including an original puppet/replicant story based on Bladerunner for Gabriel Kahane's song Bradbury (304 Broadway)

Traveling to Tehran and performing Ada/Ava at the Tehran Mobarak International Puppetry Festival. We met incredible artists and individuals, and we got to see first-hand how puppetry and the arts can facilitate exchange between cultures.

Performing and teaching at the Handmade Worlds Puppetry Festival in Minneapolis with the amazing folks from Heart of the Beast and Open Eye Figure Theatre

Performing to a sold out house with Bonnie Prince Billie at Chicago's Thalia Hall. 

Spending a month in Nantucket at the beautiful Almanack Farm Arts Colony. We filmed green screen puppetry in a barn, finished demos for our new show, and turned a cedar cottage into a sound studio.

Signing with a booking agent! We are now officially represented by NYC's Elsie Management.

Receiving a project grant from the illustrious Jim Henson Foundation!