A Yuri's Night Event

The World Space Party: A Celebration of Human Spaceflight

April 2021 marks 60 years since Yuri Gagarin made the first flight of a human into space. To celebrate this amazing achievement, and those of the hundreds of men and women who have followed, the Sun Theatre and the Space Association of Australia, present a unique afternoon and evening of space films and presentations.

First, we look at that first spaceflight by Yuri Gagarin and reveal some fascinating facts about his flight that were kept secret for 30 years.

"APOLLO 11" is an amazing film, which consists solely of archival footage, including 70 mm film previously unreleased to the public, and does not feature narration, interviews or modern recreations. A must-see on the big screen.

This is followed by a short presentation, "Australia – Apollo & Skylab", on the significant and critical role Australia has played in these American space programs.

"Searching for Skylab: America's Forgotten Triumph" is a 2019 documentary film about the 1970s NASA space station, Skylab. The film uses hundreds of hours of video and audio recording, yet it is unlikely that you’ve seen or heard much of it.

This will be the Melbourne premiere of an important film that no space enthusiast should miss and will be followed by an exclusive interview with Skylab 2 astronaut Joe Kerwin and "Searching for Skylab" director Dwight Steven-Boniecki.

The entire presentation will be Melbourne’s own “Yuri’s Night” event, a global celebration on the dual anniversary of the first human spaceflight by Yuri Gagarin in 1961 and the first launch of a reusable spacecraft, the space shuttle Columbia, in 1981.

12 April 2021 is the 60th anniversary of Gagarin’s flight.

Ticket bookings are available directly through the Sun Theatre

Apollo 11 | Directed by Todd Douglas Miller

Crafted from a newly discovered trove of 65mm footage, and more than 11,000 hours of uncatalogued audio recordings, Apollo 11 takes us straight to the heart of NASA’s most celebrated mission—the one that first put men on the moon, and forever made Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin into household names. Immersed in the perspectives of the astronauts, the team in Mission Control, and the millions of spectators on the ground, we vividly experience those momentous days and hours in 1969 when humankind took a giant leap into the future.

Searching for Skylab | Directed by Dwight Steven-Boniecki

As a crucial element in human space exploration, Skylab remains largely forgotten, falling as it does in the immediate shadow of the seemingly more spectacular Apollo lunar missions. Searching for Skylab: America's Forgotten Triumph pays tribute to this amazing NASA program by sharing the best of NASA archive material while holding the stories remembered by astronauts, engineers and their families for all posterity in the form of an entertaining, yet historically accurate documentary.

Ticket bookings are available directly through the Sun Theatre