Movies Similar to The Name is not the Thing named

Every Wall is a Door(2017)

Drawing on VHS tapes of a programme hosted by her mother on Bulgaria’s national television, the filmmaker gives a pop-style and in-depth chronicle of the gentle – even “over-gentle” – 1989 revolution.

Decasia: The State of Decay(2002)

A meditation on the human quest to transcend physicality, constructed from decaying archival footage and set to an original symphonic score.

Six Unkind Silences(2025)

A Landscape documentary about the silent voids the living inhabit after everyone they love has gone.

The Art of Un-War(2022)

Renowned artist Krzysztof Wodiczko creates powerful responses to the inequities and horrors of war. This in-depth investigation into the artist focuses on the recurring themes of war, trauma, and displacement in his work. An instigator for social change, Wodiczko’s powerful art interventions disrupt the valorization of state-sanctioned aggression.

Šturm und drunk(2019)

Kill Your TV: Jim Moir’s Weird World of Video Art(2019)

Jim Moir (aka Vic Reeves) explores Video Art, revealing how different generations ‘hacked’ the tools of television to pioneer new ways of creating art that can be beautiful, bewildering and wildly experimental.

The Subject and Tasks of Biophysics(1982)

Experimental educational film reveals the emergence of some ideas of Biophysics in historical, philosophical and methodological aspects. The first film from the Biophysics Cycle (1982-1989).

December Hide-and-Go-Seek(1993)

"Ryuta is 5 years old. Even though he is my son, I sometimes wonder what this small person is to me. Even though I see his joys and sadnesses and know the feel of his warmth on my skin when I hold him, there are moments when my feelings for him become vague and blank." - Takashi Ito

Série 7 (Éclatements de bulles de savon)(1907)

Lucien Bull was a pioneer in chronophotography. Chronophotography is defined as "a set of photographs of a moving object, taken for the purpose of recording and exhibiting successive phases of motion."

The Five Obstructions(2003)

In 1967, experimental filmmaker Jorgen Leth created a striking short film, The Perfect Human, starring a man and women sitting in a box while a narrator poses questions about their relationship and humanity. Years later, Danish director Lars von Trier made a deal with Leth to remake his film five times, each under a different set of circumstances and with von Trier's strictly prescribed rules. As Leth completes each challenge, von Trier creates increasingly further elaborate stipulations.

The Sound of Seeing(1963)

Made on a wind-up Bolex camera, The Sound of Seeing announced the arrival of 21-year-old filmmaker Tony Williams. Based around a painter and a composer wandering the city (and beyond), the film meshes music and imagery to show the duo taking inspiration from their surroundings.

Man with a Movie Camera: The Global Remake(2009)

Man With a Movie Camera: The Global Remake is a participatory video shot by people around the world who are invited to record images interpreting the original script of Vertov’s Man With A Movie Camera and upload them to this site. Software developed specifically for this project archives, sequences and streams the submissions as a film. Anyone can upload footage. When the work streams your contribution becomes part of a worldwide montage, in Vertov’s terms the “decoding of life as it is”.

Adios amigo mío, sin gestos, sin palabras(2015)

The title comes from Sergei Yesenin's last poem before comiting suicide. Using Virginia Woolf's last letters as a base, this film is meditation on the power of the word and its undertsanding and the the last moments before saying "goodbye".

Photodiary(1986)

"The majority of my 8-mm works were made for the three-minute "Personal Focus" film special put on in Fukuoka. This film is an animation of photographs I had taken on a regular basis as a sort of diary, and was made to have a rough feel to it." - Takashi Ito

Devil's Circuit(1988)

A film in which the one 60-story skyscraper that soars in the spaces between roofs spins with incredible speed. I centered the circumference with its 400 or 500 meter radius on the skyscraper and divided it into 48 sections, then took photographs from those spots and shot the photographs frame by frame.

Man Ray: Prophet of the Avant-Garde(1997)

Man Ray, the master of experimental and fashion photography was also a painter, a filmmaker, a poet, an essayist, a philosopher, and a leader of American modernism. Known for documenting the cultural elite living in France, Man Ray spent much of his time fighting the formal constraints of the visual arts. Ray’s life and art were always provocative, engaging, and challenging.

Rene Magritte: Man in the Hat(2014)

In this film, Will Young travels to Magritte's native Belgium to find out more about the man whose trademark was a bowler hat and whose apparently conventional exterior concealed the mind of a subversive rebel. Will uncovers a childhood marked by tragedy, a marriage that lasted from Magritte's adolescence until his death in 1967, and a stunning artistic legacy which endures to this day.

To Teach a Bird to Fly(2020)

This experimental nature documentary by Minna Rainio and Mark Roberts depicts climate change and the wave of extinction from the point of view of our near future. Actually, it depicts the age we live in now, or rather its fateful consequences.

El desastre de Annual(1970)

Conversation with Two Lovers(2025)

Shot in two places marrying with each other by a single and fractured bridge between Condrieu and les Roches-de-Condrieu, this film is the continuation of exploring ephemeral movement through the use of editing, camera movements and color sampling.