Manual Cinema ADA/AVA

Packages

Organ at the Kimmel Center

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Overview

Ada/Ava - 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.

MANUAL CINEMA is a performance collective, design studio, and film/ video production company founded in 2010 by Drew Dir, Sarah Fornace, Ben Kauffman, Julia VanArsdale Miller, and Kyle Vegter. Manual Cinema combines handmade shadow puppetry, cinematic techniques, and innovative sound and music to create immersive visual 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.

Organ programming is generously supported by Wyncote Foundation

Critics Rave:
“Theatrical Magic.”
– The New Yorker

“. . . this Chicago troupe is conjuring phantasms to die for in an unclassifiable story of spectral beauty…”
- New York Times Critics’ Pick

“. . . extraordinary technical sophistication—a rich quadraphonic sound design, cinematic transitions. . . the overall effect is gentle, lovely, fascinating.”
- Chicago Reader

Honors and Awards:
- Official Selection - Tehran – Mobarak International Puppet Festival 2014
- Best of Festival – National Puppet Festival – 2013
- Best Design – National Puppet Festival – 2013
- Overall Excellence, Puppetry – The New York International Fringe Festival – 2013
- Official Selection – Chicago International Movies & Music Festival – 2013
- Emmy Award Winner
- Official Selection – HotDocs – 2017
- Peabody Finalist
- Time Out New York Critic’s Pick
- New York Times Critics’ Pick