The Cinema Iris has been open since 1909 on Rua da Carioca, in Downtown Rio de Janeiro, and has never closed its doors, surviving all the transformations of the neighborhood over more than a century. Unlike most street cinemas in the city, which did not survive the arrival of shopping malls from the 1980s onwards, the Iris maintained its activities, even with the escalation of violence in the city.
Before the shopping mall era, the popularization of television and later the arrival of VHS had already caused changes in the cinema's programming. The space began showing western films before moving to the adult genre, with live strip-tease performances during intermissions of the screenings.
The cinema is now preparing for another possible transformation, given the city's project to transform Rua da Carioca into the so-called "Beer Street," which may affect the dynamics of the historic establishment in the central region of the city.
