Atom Egoyan’s Camera Bar is a dual-purpose slice-of-life drama with an eye for detail as hypnotically acute as it is relentlessly chic.

The trick isn't just how to play independent cinema, it's how to be independent cinema. And if Atom Egoyan’s Camera Bar demonstrates anything, it's that the secret is simpler than you think. Create an indie art-film theatre and crash it headlong into a stylish coffee/cocktail bar. Add an elongated communal table and, just for fun, toss in a corner lounge seating area (for pre- and post-film debate).

A split package, Camera has two components, both designed by Siamak Hariri of Hariri Pontarini Design and co-owner Hussain Amarshi. At the front is a simple but streamlined coffee bar/cocktail lounge that has a deliciously weird sensibility. At the back is the theatre, a 50-seat private room that runs independent, foreign and semi-obscure films you won't see anywhere else in town.

“The only thing we were trying to combat here, was…the local multiplexes.” says Egoyan on a chance visit (he, munching dried fruit at the bar while son Arshile was watching I, Claudia). “This space was a dream of ours for over ten years - a place in which to show films that might not be shown anywhere else, and [to] create a social atmosphere to hopefully promote discussion on the film they just watched.”

Camera Bar is less articulate but more passionate about its subject, independent film, trading conventional for experimental and blockbuster for low-budget substance. The tradeoff is a fair one, I suppose, but what it means is that Egoyan has fashioned a personal dream with blunt intensity and plain, no-frills substance