Overview
For movie lovers, there's no bad time for a new cinema to open in Melbourne and add to the city's lineup of picture palaces. Launching a few days after the Melbourne International Film Festival wraps up for another year is a particularly savvy move, however. For big-screen obsessives looking for a way to fill their now MIFF-free days until 2026's fest, Eclipse Cinema in Collingwood is welcoming in cinephiles from Thursday, August 28, 2025. One of the first features beaming from its projector is even 2024 MIFF Bright Horizons Award-winner Universal Language.
Here's another stroke of great timing: Eclipse Cinema is also launching at an address that was previously home to the Sherrin factory just as AFL finals season is about to commence. Aussie rules footballs are no longer manufactured at 32 Wellington Street in Collingwood, but this is a venue with both sporting and cinema history. The name of the Victorian capital's newest boutique and independent movie theatre is taken from a picture palace that once stood on Collingwood's Smith Street from 1913 to around 1917.
Eclipse Cinema hails from owner/operator Mark Walker, who boasts 15-plus years working at MIFF, was a projectionist at both Yarraville's Sun Theatre and Carlton's Cinema Nova, and also co-founded Pivotonian Cinema in Geelong, running it for nearly ten years.
Walker's latest venture is all about silver-screen delights via a single-screen setup with digital projection and high-definition sound, all behind a 1920s facade — and also about pairing its films with snacks and sips, such as Stomping Ground beers, a range of wines, plus popcorn and homemade choc tops.
Program-wise, audiences can settle in for a mix of new releases with retrospective flicks. Alongside dramedy Universal Language, Eclipse's launch lineup also features Friendship, the A24 comedy starring Tim Robinson (I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson) as a man who really wants to be pals with his weatherman neighbour (Paul Rudd, Death of a Unicorn); Grand Tour, which won Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes (The Tsugua Diaries) the Best Director Award at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival; and a 4K restoration of Burden of Dreams, the 1982 documentary about the making of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo.
This is the type of venue where Pedro Almódovar (The Room Next Door) pictures will also regularly grace the screen, including each Wednesday evening, starting with 1999's Oscar-winning All About My Mother.
Eddington, Good Time, Sorry, Baby, No Other Land, Splitsville and Lesbian Space Princess are also among the cinema's upcoming titles, with the 64-seater spot also keen to showcase indie, queer, First Nations and gender-diverse filmmaking, as well as Melbourne-made fare — and titles that viewers mightn't have caught elsewhere on their limited general-release runs.
Eclipse's screenings run from 11am daily, showing five or six sessions per day. You can also head by for a 10pm late flick on weekends.
Collingwood's new cinema joins with FoMo in East Brunswick and Palace Penny Lane in Moonee Ponds among the city's other new picture palace openings in the past few years. A new IMAX at Village Cinemas Fountain Gate is also on the way before the end of 2025, as is IMAX at the existing Hoyts at Melbourne Central.
"It is so exciting to be launching a new boutique cinema in this culturally rich neighbourhood, and I'm truly confident locals will embrace the independent and cutting-edge cinema that the Eclipse will offer," said Walker back when he was running a crowdfunding campaign to help Eclipse finish its build and open.
Find Eclipse Cinema at 32 Wellington Street, Collingwood from Thursday, August 28, 2025 — and head to the venue's website for further details and tickets.