A cinema is a place where movies are shown to the audience. In the early days, movies were shown in cafes, teahouses and other places. With the progress and development of movies, there have been cinemas specially built for showing movies. The development of movies-from silent to stereoscopic, from black-and-white movies to color movies, from ordinary screens to wide screens to dome screens and circular screens-has greatly changed the shape, size, proportion and acoustic technology of cinemas. The cinema must meet the technical requirements of film screening and obtain the good visual and auditory effects it should have. The film became an argument after dinner.

The film projection industry is a monopoly industry. In order to develop and protect their own commercial interests, operators have mastered a considerable number of cinemas in some cities or regions and established projection networks, thus monopolizing the distribution of new films in a certain country or a certain film production company. The earliest cinema in China was established in Shanghai by Spanish filmmaker remus from the beginning of the 20th century to the middle of the 20th century. It consists of seven cinemas, including Hongkou, Xialing Peck and Victoria. Later, China Film Company also built large-scale cinemas in Ping Jin and Shanghai. In the early 1920s, Ming-Yau Lo, a China film capitalist, established cinemas in North China and Northeast China. In 1930s, Shaw Brothers, entrepreneurs of Tianyi Film Company, set up Nanyang Cinema in Singapore, Malaysia and other places. At present, some film distributors in Hongkong, Taiwan Province and other places still adopt the cinema line system.