The arrival of cinema in the Ottoman Empire was connected to a number of Western European and North American entrepreneurs’ keenness in making profit from exhibiting and renting films, and selling their devices in the late 1896. The organisers of film exhibitions in imperial Istanbul during this time were artists, business people and foreign itinerant exhibitors who were in tune with the latest technology. Author Sami Pa?azade Sezai described the carnival-like atmosphere on a Ramadan night in 1898 in the capital, with advertisements for shadow theatre (karagöz), commedia dell’arte, and cinema found side-by-side. Sezai evaluated this situation in terms of the contrast between East and West, with cinema as ‘the great innovation,’ bringing the ‘new world’ to ‘ancient Asia’. Other testimonies from the audiences show that they were curious to see the latest novelty of the West, therefore itinerant exhibitions became gradually popular, and screenings took place in coffeehouses, pubs, schools and mansions. Cinema and entertainment in imperial Istanbul has two research objectives: firstly, to explore the cinematic experience of audiences within the background of already settled entertainment culture and secondly, to examine the infrastructural challenges that legislators and operators faced. Specifically, it will ask what was the role of cinema’s technology in modern subjectivity of audiences. In other words, what did this new technology mean for audience? What was the specific requirements of film screening practices in terms of its modern devices and the use of power sources? This paper makes use of archival sources, press review, memories and literary works of the late nineteenth century.