INDIE CINEMA GUIDE

Featuring: We Are Lady Parts creator Nida Manzoor on Polite Society; A look at Dracula's bloody history on screen ahead of Renfield

Words: Jamie Dunn

Welcome to your new Indie Cinema Guide. It aims to celebrate the essential indie cinemas on your doorstep, as well as shine a light on the range of wonderful films that will be playing on their screens over the next few months. The films previewed in this guide are an eclectic snapshot of what’s available to curious audiences in Scotland this Spring/Summer, and one thing that binds them is that the absolute best place to experience them is on a cinema screen.

You’d regret not going to see the riotous action-comedy Polite Society with a lively crowd, for example, or witnessing the beauty of Godland’s transcendental images on the biggest screen possible. The ticking-timebomb plot of eco-thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline will feel even more urgent when your heartbeat syncs up with your fellow audience members in a packed screening and the lush music and costuming of the wildly entertaining biopic Chevalier, which tells the unheralded story of Black French composer Joseph Bologne, deserves the best sound system and projection available.

We also highlight two classics returning to cinemas soon: Martin Scorsese’s tragic boxing epic Raging Bull and Bill Forsyth’s lyrical comedy Local Hero. You may have seen these films at home countless times but their power and pathos will only be enhanced by the cinema screen; if you have only watched them on a TV, you will be seeing entirely different movies.

It was around this time last year that audiences were packing out theatres to see Everything Everywhere All at Once for the first time. We cannot guarantee you that any of these titles will go on to win big at next year’s Oscars, like Everything Everywhere All at Once did this year, but we can promise you’ll find films as euphoric, life-affirming and inventive on the next few pages. Dig in, and see you at the movies.