In The City: Archibald leads festival efforts

LIMA — To understand how Lima ended up with its own film festival, you need to go back a few decades to a 4-year-old Len Archibald and his first viewing of “E.T.” That was the start of an obsession with movies that hasn't gone away.

“My parents took me to see it and I was just blown away. It was like a religious experience for me. I asked my mom who Steven Spielberg was and when she told me he was the director, I told her I wanted to be Steven Spielberg. That started everything,” said Len Archibald, now 33 and the man behind the Northwest Ohio Independent Film Festival.

Jump ahead about three decades and Archibald is still a man of high ambitions. The Toronto native, who now lives in Rockford, has put his dream of being the next Spielberg at least temporarily on hold as he tackles the equally lofty goal of making Lima a mecca for independent film. On July 6 through 8, he plans to screen 25 independent films from around the globe in Veterans Memorial Civic Center.

The festival will also include a variety of panel discussions on subjects ranging from screenwriting and distribution to the explosive popularity of superhero movies. Those three days of festival have taken months, if not years of planning and plenty of Archibald's time.

“It' a lot of phone calls, a lot of trips back and forth from Rockford, and a lot of meetings. It's about all I do right now,” Archibald said.

While this will mark the first year for the festival in Lima, it is actually the second year for the event. Archibald launched the festival in Van Wert last year. It began with an off-handed suggestion during a Rotary Club meeting and grew from there.

“I was giving a presentation at the Rotary Club and just said, off the cuff, that it would be nice to have an independent film festival,” Archibald said. “This group of people got behind the idea and it really took off. The reception that we got in Van Wert was really incredible.”

Archibald and others on the NWOFF board decided to move the festival to Lima where there was more room and a larger population to support ticket sales. Since then, local arts, education and nonprofit leaders have stepped up to help with the details, including fundraising, logistics and weeding through an expected 600 or more entries.

“People have been great here. Lima has just treated us like superstars. It's just overwhelming,” Archibald said.

If this year's festival is a hit, he plans to keep it growing. In the meantime, Archibald has other projects to get to, including finishing up a film degree at the University of Toledo and, eventually, that childhood goal of directing his own “E.T.”

“I have eight feature film screenplays collecting dust on a shelf at home,” Archibald said. “I'd like to get to that, but right now, this has taken over everything.”