Manual Cinema: A Unique Hybrid of Shadow Theatre and Cinematic Practices

This article explores the phenomenon of “manual cinema”—a notion independently adopted by various artists to describe their original practices that hybridize shadow theatre with both historical and contemporary image-projection technologies. The concept of manual cinema is consistently developed by artists and collectives rooted in the art of puppetry, which constitute the primary analytical Focus of this study. Despite the increasing scholarly interest in convergence theatre and various media, this particular artistic practice has remained largely overlooked, and the conceptual framework of manual cinema remains under-theorized. The study examines the original concepts of manual cinema implemented by Polish artists, Tadeusz Wierzbicki and Adam Walny, as well as the collectives Manual Cinema (USA) and Hotel Modern (Netherlands). Following Peter W. Marx’s perspective on media ecology, the article explores the concept of manual cinema as a media machine with its own relationship between the performer, the apparatus, and the spectator. This approach allows for capturing and analyzing the function of ‘perceptual multistability’ (as defined by Erika Fischer-Lichte) inherent in the discussed performances.