Lula del Rey

A lonely adolescent girl living on the outskirts of a vast satellite field runs away from home and into a world of danger, deception, and disappointment. Set in the midcentury American Southwest and inspired by the music of Hank Williams, Roy Orbison, and Patsy Cline, Lula del Ray is a mythic reinvention of the classic coming-of-age story. Manual Cinema combines handmade shadow puppetry, cinematic techniques, and live music to create a stunning visual landscape.

Manual Cinema is a Chicago-based performance collective, design studio, and film and video production company founded in 2010 by Drew Dir, Sarah Fornace, Ben Kauffman, Julia Miller, and Kyle Vegter. Using vintage overhead projectors, multiple screens, puppets, actors, live feed cameras, multichannel sound design, and a live music ensemble, Manual Cinema transforms the experience of attending the cinema and imbues it with liveness, ingenuity, and theatricality.