Since opening in 1925 as the Hillsboro Theatre, the Belcourt has stood at the center of Nashville’s changing cultural life. Over the course of a century, it has been a neighborhood movie house, a stage for live performance, a home for community theater, an art-house cinema, a music venue, and a nonprofit film center. Its story is also the story of a city shaped by shifting technologies, urban change, grassroots activism, and evolving ideas about what cultural institutions are for.