tom 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). What have you got? The most unconventional, most talked-about, most likely to succeed new bar in art gallery-eria, that's what.

Making for a split package are the two parts that bear Egoyan’s directorial stamp, both designed by Siamak Hariri of Hariri Pontarini Design and co-owner Hussain Amarshi. At the front is a simple but streamlined coffee bar (soon to be cocktail lounge), that’s got a deliciously weird sensibility that has already garnered a local crowd. At the back is the theatre, a 50-seat cinema that suggests a sense of a private room, running independent, foreign and semi-obscure films you won't see anywhere else in town. Like Anatomy of Hells, that’ll be screening next month.

"The only thing we were trying to combat here, was with 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 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, independant 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. Now reality, that dream is a work in progress; for example, fifty people entering the theatre and fifty people exiting creates the unforseen problem of gridlock in a bar area that only has a 50-seat capacity itself.

Nonetheless, Hariri has a way with flow, and with the Camera Bar layout comes some interesting innovation about handling situations with detached grace; to enter the theatre, you enter a closet-sized dark-room and shut the door. You then enter the theatre from darkness (and hopefully silence!) to prevent disturbing the audience in attendance.

“When I was young, my parents had a furniture store,” says Egoyan, navigating his little bar like a proud parent. “And I used to spend so much time studying the space, dividing the space. See how this or that idea would work. For the past ten years, I dreamed how this space should look.”

I don't know when Egoyan turned into Charles Khabouth, but unlike Khabouth, he’s got good intentions of keeping things small - not boutique small, but art gallery small. Unless, that is, the future Camera Bars get radically mainstream in some way to keep the in-the-knows second-guessing their own art house cred.

Even with the liberties it takes with the design, this is a venue that took imagination and suppressed childish wonder. Egoyan, Amarshi and Hariri brought their baby to fruition in an unfussy but original way that feels earthy and real, combining two setups in one, all the while tickling us with witty references to the gallery-ness of the area. Put it all together, and you've got a community spot that leaves the block buster, ear-splitting sounds and extortionate concessions over at your local cineplex in the dust.

The pairing of the little experimental theatre with a little bar - this is not a mainstream venue. Visceral, demanding and tiny, yes - but mainstream, hell no. - DE



Write a Review
Reader Reviews