MUMBAI: Broadway Cinema, the cinema management brand of Hong Kong‘s Edko Films, has opened its first art house cinema in China named Broadway Cinematheque MOMA in Beijing‘s MOMA residential compound.

The cinema will serve as a new distribution platform for European cinema and art house films in China. However its first major event was the Beijing premiere of Michael Jackson‘s This Is It.

Broadway Cinematheque MOMA has three screens and 401 seats with both film and digital screening facilities. MOMA is a residential compound in central Beijing with shopping, restaurants and other facilities.

The cinema is now seeking independent and specialty films from China and abroad.

China‘s film import regulations allow around 20 smaller films - usually European, Asian and US independent titles - to be imported each year on a flat-fee basis.

Currently, the cinema is co-hosting The 2nd European Union Film Festival in China showing three of the 26 films in the showcase namely Women‘s Conspiracy (2007) by Greek filmmaker Vassilis Vafeas, Sweden‘s Evil (2003) by Mikael H?fström and Flood (2008) by Tony Mitchell.