Ever since Champaign’s Art Theater closed in 2019, local viewers have not had much chance to see well-crafted American and foreign independent films with solid stories to tell on a big screen apart from some selections at Ebertfest.
That situation looks like it might be changing with the prospect of a new festival of independent cinema, The Chambana Film Festival, projected for dates in May of next year. The festival is the creation of Nat Dykeman, founder of the Lake County Film Festival (which also focuses on independent cinema), who has recently relocated to the Champaign-Urbana area.
Dykeman has been running the Lake County Film Festival ever since starting it in 2004 (and financing its early years with prize money he won on a quiz show called “Ultimate Film Fanatic”). He also owned a DVD rental store that boasted one of the largest stocks of independent and foreign titles (rivaling Facets Multimedia in Chicago and Champaign’s own That’s Rentertainment) and started his own DVD distribution label, Cinema Obscura.
In addition to disseminating independent features and shorts, he even produced a feature, 2012’s “QWERTY,” which Roger Ebert gave three stars and called “charming, winning and sweet.”
Though we won’t be seeing the Chambana Film Festival until next spring, Dykeman is testing the waters here and will be displaying the sorts of films the festival will promote with a monthly film series at the Savoy 16 IMAX.
The first offering, which will have free admission, is Dykeman’s own “QWERTY,” screening at 4 p.m. March 31. Dykeman will be on hand for a question-and-answer session after the film. “QWERTY,” a rom-com with sober undertones directed by Bill Sebastian, deals with love, depression, rebellion, the Department of Motor Vehicles and competitive Scrabble.
Zoe (Dana Pupkin), a DMV employee continually taunted by her coworkers and an outsider even in her own awful family, can’t quite make it on time to meet with the Scrabble club at her local library. Marty (Eric Hailey) suffers through doubts about the meaning of life and his department-store security job until one day a display of overpriced underwear sets him off — and introduces him to Zoe. Romance leads to the national Scrabble championship tournament for her and a brighter (or at least less-dim) outlook on life for him.
In keeping with the film’s focus on Scrabble, its title (the name of the computer keyboard we are most familiar with, derived from the first six letters of the top row of letter keys) is one of the very few English words accepted by the game in which the letter Q is not followed by a U.
On April 28, the 2022 Japanese feature “Trapped Balloon” tells the story of a young woman suffering from depression who visits her estranged and dying father on the remote island where she grew up and also encounters a vaguely mysterious neighbor with a tragic story of his own. The daughter is played by Toko Miura, who starred in the 2022 Oscar-winning “Drive My Car.” Writer-director Hiroyuki Miyagawa coincidentally won an award for one of his short films at the 2019 Lake County Film Festival.
The third scheduled film, “Bike Vessel,” will screen May 26. The documentary follows filmmaker Eric Seals and his 70-year-old father as they bicycle from St. Louis to Chicago (but, unfortunately, not through Champaign). Donnie, the father, had bad eating, drinking and smoking habits that led to three quadruple-bypass surgeries, but he made a full recovery and changes in his lifestyle that included biking 30 miles every day. The father-and-son journey also recaps with photos, videos and animated segments the health and family life of a Midwest Black working-class family.
Whether or not the series continues beyond May, and regardless of if next year’s Chambana Film Festival will depend on the success of this series at the Savoy 16, what is certain is that Dykeman is bringing to Champaign-Urbana a commitment to and passion for promoting independent cinema that we haven’t seen since the days of Ron Epple’s Expanded Cinema (exhibition) and Picture Start (distribution) in the last century.
