Iwanami Hall, Pioneering Tokyo Art Cinema, to Close Following COVID Losses

Iwanami Hall, an iconic art-house cinema in Tokyo, has announced that it will close permanently from the end of July. It blamed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The 200-seater single screen venue in the Jimbocho district opened in 1968 as a general cultural facility and became a movie theater in 1974. The conversion to cinema was led by general manager Takano Etsuko and Kawakita Kashiko, one of the most important women in the history of Japanese cinema, who headed a management operation which called itself the “Equipe du Cinema” (French for cinema team). The name has since been adopted… Read Full Article