Another year, another August of delight for Melbourne cinephiles. Over the next couple of weeks, lines for the Melbourne international film festival will curl down the street, around the block and half way to Brisbane – as they do every year – but in 2014, one big part of the festival-going experience has changed.

The iconic Greater Union cinema on Russell Street, a festival institution that has housed opening nights, closing nights and hundreds if not thousands of premieres, has gone to that great big choc-top in the sky, closing its doors for good in October 2013.

It doesn't seem to get a mention in the Miff program, so let us take this opportunity to bow our heads and give thanks: Dear Greater Union, we appreciated your spinal damage-inducing seats, your gaudy popcorn, coke and who-knows-whatever-else stained carpet, and your exit doors leading to creepy garbage-strewn alleyways.

But even without you, there are plenty of interesting things to see and do during the fest. Here’s 10 of them.

Boyhood

Writer-director Richard Linklater’s quietly revolutionary coming-of-age drama follows the childhood and adolescence of Mason (newcomer Ellar Coltrane) from rosy-cheeked whipper snapper to a drug dabbling college student. Shot intermittently over 12 years with the same cast and crew (including Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette as Mason’s parents), Boyhood plays like a fictionalised version of Michael Apted’s 7 Up series but without the stop-start structure.

Linklater has previously experimented with progression of time as a means of adding dramatic weight to stories, famously in his Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight trilogy. But there is something almost indescribably moving in the way he fills a long narrative arc in Boyhood with such tender-hearted dramatic detail.

Showing: Saturday 2, Wednesday 6 August

Rigor Mortis

Gross-out enthusiasts who like their horror fast, hyper-stylised and excessively violent will gorge on the squeamish thrills handed to them on this blood-stained platter. Chinese director Juno Mak’s gnarly genre outing concerns a suicidal actor who moves into an apartment populated by ghosts. There's an interesting irony to the idea of a person saved from killing themselves by the undead, but Mak’s focus lies squarely on cranking the gore dial to 11 and packing in loads of crude jolts and squeals.

Showing: Tuesday 12, Friday 15 August

The Infinite Man

Few things warm the hard hearts of film critics more than uncovering joyfully inventive under-the-radar gems made on their own shore. Australian writer-director Hugh Sullivan’s debut feature, The Infinite Man, is a rare find: a blazingly original time travel rom-com about an awkward young inventor who tries to recreate the perfect romantic weekend, only to have multiple versions of himself, his girlfriend and her ex (Alex Dimitriades) turn up to spoil the party. Pandemonium ensues as parallel timelines loop and interact.

Showing: Sunday 3, Wednesday 6 August

Talking Pictures: Marvelous Melbourne movies

From Australian films such as Death in Brunswick, Malcolm, The Club, Dogs in Space, Patrick and Pure Shit to American productions including On the Beach and Ghost Rider, Melbourne has made a lot of cinema appearances over the years. Listen to a panel of well-known Melburnians including George Calombaris, Adam Elliot, Clementine Ford and Jack Charles discuss the city's most iconic films.

Showing: Monday 4 August

Touki Bouki

The 1973 Senegalese classic, Touki Bouki, heavily inspired by the French New Wave, is a travelogue drama of the kind that – as they say – they don’t show you in the brochure. A swirling pastiche of sights and sounds oriented around a young couple determined to trade life in Senegal for their dream of going to Paris, it is a sublimely edited work that flows like a harsh but beautiful piece of music. Restored in 2008 by Martin Scorcese’s World Cinema Foundation, Miff presents a rare chance to see it on the big screen.

Showing: Saturday 2, Wednesday 13 August

A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness

Estonian-French triptych drama, A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness, is a sleepy collaboration from experimental filmmakers Ben River and Ben Russell. True to its form, the film is divided into three vaguely connected chapters. A musician (Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe) starts in an Estonian commune, absconds into the Finnish wilderness and, finally, performs with a band in Norway. There are interesting tonal shifts and bold combinations of audio and images, but the film ends with a blurry 30 minute single take of a grungy heavy metal gig that ought to have River and Russell prosecuted for noise pollution.

Showing: Saturday 9, Saturday 16 August

The Search for Weng Weng

Filipino movie star Weng Weng occupies a short but distinctive place in cinema history. Short being the operative word: the late actor, who was raised in a poor family and experienced flash-in-the-pan fame in the 80s, was the 2ft 9in tall star of schlocky James Bond parodies For Y'ur Height Only and Agent 00. Debut documentary filmmaker Andrew Leavold flew off to investigate the diminutive star’s life and came back with a lo-fi but affecting portrait of a memorable character and the culture that turned him into a cult celebrity.

Showing: Thursday 14, Saturday 16 August

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films

While we’re on the subject of cult films, Australian director Mark Hartley proves once again he knows more than a little about them. Hartley, whose crowning work Not Quite Hollywood (2008) fossicked through the detritus of Australian genre films, turns his focus to Cannon Films, an American studio that pumped out loads of cheap titles in the 80s and occasionally struck gold before going bust in the 90s. Mixing talking head footage with outrageous clips from marginal films, Hartley has the format down pat. His documentaries are cinephile catnip.

Showing: Saturday 2, Tuesday 12 August

Fulldome Showcase 1 and 2

Take a break from narrative subtleties and storytelling nuances by indulging in a sensory overload at Melbourne planetarium. The Miff programme guide describes Fulldome as being about “the complexities of perception" that “explores the visionary possibilities of virtual acoustics and 3D audio-animation.” Hang on, what?

Showing: Showcase 1 – Saturday 9, Friday 15 August; Showcase 2 – Saturday 9, Friday 15 August

The Dirties

Canadian found-footage meta-mockumentary, The Dirties, toys with a provocative premise, following a pair of picked-on high school friends make a movie about enacting revenge on their aggressors. When one uses his fictionalised role as inspiration for his real-life actions, debut 26-year-old filmmaker Matt Johnson (also starring) evolves the film from a curious fusion of teen angst and digital technology to something darker and more compelling.

Showing: Friday 1, Tuesday 5 August

• Melbourne international film festival runs from 31 July to 17 August at venues across the city