“Local Heroes” is a free-to-read Vague Visages column dedicated to movie theater memories and the theatrical experience.

Nestled just behind the Dundee Contemporary Arts’ entrance staircase, the two-screen movie theatre is the epicentre of my love affair with arthouse and international cinema. Nearly 20 years on from its establishment and my first visit, the DCA continues to provide the City of Discovery with a different spin on the world of cinema.

Dundee has frequently been — and continues to be — the butt of many jokes from fellow Scots. Glasgow is the more famous of Scotland’s post-industrial cities, but Dundee’s path feels similar: that of decline from an industrial hegemony and prosperity (famously “jute, jam and journalism”) to a more deprived new equilibrium, and a now burgeoning recovery driven in large part by the arts and creative industries. Long before the new Victoria & Albert design museum was conceived, the DCA has served the city’s cultural needs in cinema and more. A recent addition in historical terms, it would be fair to say that the DCA has not yet permeated the city’s collective consciousness as much as, say, the Dundee Rep — a theatre which has played host to performances from Brian Cox, Lynn Redgrave and others.

Founded in 1999, the DCA stands at the west end of the city centre, with its proximity to the university and theatre not being coincidental. Upon opening, it replaced an existing arthouse cinema — the Steps Theatre — and expanded the Dundee’s cultural space with studios and galleries. Placed at the edge of the city’s student areas and adjacent to the main theatre, the DCA feels like it formed the heartbeat of the city’s cultural engagement, along with the locally iconic Groucho’s record store. I invested many hours as a teenager into browsing Groucho’s trove of rare, common, forgotten and wide range of CDs before taking in the listings at the DCA down the road.

Local Heroes: Ben Flanagan on Odeon Chelmsford

Upon the release of Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine, my high school class was taken to view the film at the DCA. With only two multiplexes operating in the city at the time, it is hard to understate the vanishingly small probability of otherwise seeing the documentary theatrically. During this period of the early 2000s, the DCA would regularly be the only place likely to show certain films within the regional limits, let alone the city boundary. Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko was also screened in one of the centre’s two cinema screens around that same time — late 2002 or early 2003. It is fair to say that both films opened up a new avenue of cinema that I would have been unlikely to encounter in the local multiplexes, stacked as they were with studio franchise fare and the beginnings of the comic book movie’s renaissance. 

Bowling for Columbine and Donnie Darko stand as the most memorable of my visits to the cinema in my teenage years, and it seems appropriate that one is a narrative feature and the other is a documentary. That combination illustrates my cultural horizons’ expansion — thanks to the DCA — served both a recreational and educational purpose. That exposure furthered a keen interest in current affairs outside my own country, as well as an adventurous spirit in film choice that would be expanded further by the great directors of history (with DVDs snapped up at reduced prices at the aforementioned Groucho’s record store). Even though the DCA would frequently cater to mainstream releases, the range of cinema beamed on to its screens surpassed anything within reaching distance of a car-free teen in the age before streaming services.

Local Heroes: Elle Haywood on Arts Picturehouse Cambridge

It wasn’t until I spent time living in Cambridge that my love of cinema really blossomed further thanks to the institutions and people associated with the Arts Picturehouse and Cambridge Film Festival, but that would not have happened at all without the seed sown by Dundee’s local arts venues. I last visited the cinema in late 2019 to watch Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, a film which could not — for all of Edinburgh’s cultural cachet — be viewed in the Scottish capital until weeks afterwards. The past year has been a testing time for many venues worldwide, but the importance and effect of their continued presence in Scotland outside the two largest cities cannot be overstated. In a small country where Edinburgh dominates culture’s exhibition and Glasgow dominates the creation, it is worth celebrating Dundee’s continued rise in both, and the DCA’s place in a constellation of Scottish arts venues outside the twin population hubs. Dundee may be famous as the birthplace of Grand Theft Auto and the new home of the V&A Dundee design museum, but DCA is a vital part of Scotland’s cultural landscape, and arguably a nucleation point for the city’s burgeoning renaissance.

Jim Ross (@JimGR) is a film critic and film journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland. He is the Managing Editor and co-founder of TAKE ONE Magazine, which began as the official review publication of the Cambridge Film Festival and now covers film festivals and independent film worldwide. Jim hosted a fortnightly film radio show on Cambridge 105FM from 2011-2013 and joined the crew of Cinetopia, on Edinburgh community radio EH-FM, in 2019.