Early cinema was initially embraced by the Ottoman upper class and royal family in December 1896 in imperial Istanbul. Strict policies implemented by the Yildiz Palace administration directly determined the availability and spread of cinema until the dethronement of Sultan Abdulhamid II after the Young Turk Revolution (1908). This paper will address significant codified regulations of early cinema during the Hamidian era. It aims to focus on the role of Hamidian cinema policies, mostly practiced by police forces and other local authorities. The mystification of Sultan Abdulhamid II’s actions by some scholars leads to a problematic discourse and ill-defined historical characterization in the current cinema scholarship in Turkey and wider international scene. Thus, specific interest will be given to these certain discourses constructed by the scholars within the regulations of early cinema (i.e., discourses on the use of electricity for film screenings, censorship). For this purpose, I will try to refute the “prohibition model” created by the scholars and will show the “productive” face of the Hamidian era in the whole arrays of cinema regulations. Archival sources in the form of governmental decrees and legal acts, as well as press reviews play an important role for this paper’s interdisciplinary approach in which historical and film studies’ methodologies are utilized. Exploring the key issues on regulation of cinema during the Hamidian era will contribute to the non-Western societies’ histories and practices of early cinema within the distinct milieu of the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the twentieth century.