Manual Cinema is a performance collective, design studio, and film/video production company founded in Chicago, Illinois, in 2010, by Drew Dir, Sarah Fornace, Ben Kauffman, Julia Miller, and Kyle Vegter. Manual Cinema combines handmade shadow puppetry, vintage overhead projectors, live feed cameras, cinematic techniques, sound effects and live music to create film and theatre works.
Manual Cinema contributed two films, Ten Letters a Day and Power of Place, to the Barack Obama Presidential Center, which opened to the public on June 19, 2026.
Co-Artistic Directors and Staff:
The company was awarded an Emmy in 2017 for The Forger, a video created for The New York Times and named Chicago Artists of the Year in 2018 by the Chicago Tribune. In 2020 they were included in 50 of Chicago theater "Rising Stars and Storefront Stalwarts" (Newcity).
Their shadow puppet animations were featured in the 2021 film remake of Candyman, directed by Nia DaCosta and produced by Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions. In September 2014, the group traveled to Tehran, Iran to present their piece, Ada/Ava at a puppet festival.
In 2022 they premiered Leonardo! A Wonderful Show About A Terrible Monster, an adaptation of two books by celebrated children's author Mo Willems and a live adaptation of their 2020 streaming hit A Christmas Carol.