Spacetember Film Festival

They both boast stars. They each look better when there's nothing else in your field of view. Darkness provides them both with their absolute best surroundings, too. We're talking about peering at space and hitting the cinema, two pastimes that are no strangers to combining — as IMAX Melbourne is celebrating with its Spacetember Film Festival.

Starting in September but also running in October because some sessions have proven that popular, this film fest is all about checking out space flicks on the venue's massive seven-storey-tall screen. Kicking off on Thursday, September 14, Spacetember's lineup includes classics, recent favourites and new releases. Obviously, 2001: A Space Odyssey is one such movie.

When you're not communing with Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, whether for the first or 51st time, the IMAX 1570 version of Christopher Nolan's Interstellar is another of the fest's big drawcards. Playing with 75-plus minutes of sequences presented in full-screen IMAX, it's also already selling out.

Screening dates and times vary across the fest; however, you can revel in footage from the moon landing with excellent documentary Apollo 11, see the dramatised Ryan Gosling (Barbie)-starring version via First Man, ponder the heavens with Jordan Peele's Nope and revisit the Oscar-winning Gravity in 3D.

From Thursday, September 28, The Creator joins in, giving viewers a brand-new sci-fi flick starring John David Washington (Tenet).