Best movies like Empire
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Empire Starring Jonas Mekas, Andy Warhol, and more. If you liked Empire then you may also like: Zorns Lemma, Vinyl, Visitors, We Can't Go Home Again, Naqoyqatsi and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
Experimental film consisting of a single static shot of the Empire State Building from early evening until nearly 3 am the next day.
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Visitors
From the director of KOYAANISQATSI, an astonishing film that documents the drama of how we both live and witness what we experience. Shot in rich black and white Godfrey Reggio's latest film finds the full spectrum of emotion in human faces, gorgeous landscapes and even the behavior of an especially expressive gorilla.
We Can't Go Home Again
Nicholas Ray plays himself, acting as mentor, friend, and artistic inspiration to his students at Binghamton.
Naqoyqatsi
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
On the Town
Three sailors wreak havoc as they search for love during a whirlwind 24-hour leave in New York City.
Running Time
Carl, a career criminal, receives an early release from prison and immediately begins preparations for his next big heist.
The Joy of Life
A blending of documentary and experimental narrative strategies, combining stunning 16mm landscape cinematography with a bold, lyrical voice-over to share two San Francisco stories: the history of the Golden Gate Bridge as “suicide landmark,” and the story of a butch dyke in San Francisco searching for love and self-discovery. The Joy of Life is a film about landscapes, both physical and emotional.
Koyaanisqatsi
Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.
Kusama: Infinity
Now one of the world’s most celebrated artists, Yayoi Kusama broke free of the rigid society in which she was raised, and overcame sexism, racism, and mental illness to bring her artistic vision to the world stage. At 88 she lives in a mental hospital and continues to create art.
All My Life
The film is made up of one single take. The camera pans to the left, focusing on a dilapidated fence in a rural field, as Ella Fitzgerald's "All My Life" plays on the soundtrack. At the end of the 3 minute film, the camera tilts up to the blue sky just as the song ends.
Back and Forth
A camera moves back and forth at an increasing pace. Back and forth, back and forth...
Castro Street
Inspired by a lesson from Erik Satie, a film in the form of a street: Castro Street, running by the Standard Oil Refinery in Richmond, California.
Chappaqua
Semi-autobiographical story of Conrad Rooks, who travels to France to undergo a drug-withdrawal cure. Flashbacks to the beginings of psychedelia in San Fran. Though initially confusing, as Rooks blends drug-illusion with reality, and cuts color with black-and-white and monochrome tinted shots, "Chappaqua" is conventionally constructed with a beginning, middle, and end.
Chelsea Girls
Lacking a formal narrative, Warhol's mammoth film follows various residents of the Chelsea Hotel in 1966 New York City. The film was intended to be screened via dual projector set-up.
Coming Apart
A psychiatrist secretly films his female patients as an experiment; he pushes both him and his customers in ways that induce his own mental breakdown.
Eat
This art experiment by Andy Warhol captures the simple act of a man eating mushrooms. This one-man show starring Robert Indiana presents the actor slowly eating some mushrooms, having an enjoyable time not only with the food but also with a friendly cat that from time to time comes to see what the man is doing.
Identity Crisis
A rapper finds himself possessed by the soul of a dead fashion designer; frequently switching personalities.
Angel City
A detective fiction mixed with an essay-documentary about Los Angeles, Hollywood and the film industry, Angel City is a satiric comedy with serious intentions.
My Dinner with Andre
Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, apparently playing themselves, share their lives over the course of an evening meal at a restaurant.
The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra
This short experimental film tells the story of a man who comes to Hollywood to become a star, only to fail and be dehumanized. He is identified by the number 9413 written on his forehead.
Lost in London
Within the course of a night, Woody Harrelson finds himself in a misadventure in London that winds him up in prison.
Powaqqatsi
An exploration of technologically developing nations and the effect the transition to Western-style modernization has had on them.
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One
In Manhattan's Central Park, a film crew directed by William Greaves is shooting a screen test with various pairs of actors. It's a confrontation between a couple: he demands to know what's wrong, she challenges his sexual orientation. Cameras shoot the exchange, and another camera records Greaves and his crew. Sometimes we watch the crew discussing this scene, its language, and the process of making a movie. Is there such a thing as natural language? Are all things related to sex? The camera records distractions - a woman rides horseback past them; a garrulous homeless vet who sleeps in the park chats them up. What's the nature of making a movie?
Timecode
A production company begins casting for its next feature, and an up-and-coming actress named Rose tries to manipulate her filmmaker boyfriend, Alex, into giving her a screen test. Alex's wife, Emma, knows about the affair and is considering divorce, while Rose's girlfriend secretly spies on her and attempts to sabotage the relationship. The four storylines in the film were each shot in one take and are shown simultaneously, each taking up a quarter of the screen.
Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son
An experimental feature made by rephotographing the 1905 Biograph short Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son.
Spirits in the Dark
A lonely widower finds a mysterious video on his computer that leads him to an abandoned town occupied by an ominous entity.
Lapse
Renee wakes up one morning in the middle of the desert with blood on her hands. She cannot remember why she is there, how she got there or with whom she came. Her quest to uncover forgotten events leads her on a journey of discovery where reality and memory collide and people are not what they seem.
The Opportunists
Vic is a struggling auto mechanic with a safe-cracking past and a lot of debt. His girlfriend runs a bar and offers to loan him the money she's saved for remodeling, but Vic is reluctant to take it. When a long-lost cousin from Ireland shows up on his doorstep, the two team up for one last heist.
Passion of Mind
When Marie, a widow in Provence with two daughters, locks her bedroom door and goes to sleep, she dreams about Marty, a literary agent in Manhattan who dreams equally vividly about Marie. The women look alike. Marie meets William who begins to court her. Marty meets Aaron, an accountant, becomes his friend and then his lover. Both women tell their lovers about their dream life. William is jealous, Aaron is accepting. Even though they've become lovers, Marie won't fall asleep next to William. Marie goes on holiday with William to Paris, and Marty wakes up with an ashtray from the hotel on her night stand. Are they the same person? What will unlock reality
Cremaster 3
CREMASTER 3 (2002) is set in New York City and narrates the construction of the Chrysler Building, which is in itself a character - host to inner, antagonistic forces at play for access to the process of (spiritual) transcendence. These factions find form in the struggle between Hiram Abiff or the Architect ...
Poor Little Rich Girl
A young, jobless woman stays in bed, reads, talks on the phone, smokes cigarettes, makes fresh coffee, and tries on some clothes from a large wardrobe.
The Untitled Star Wars Mockumentary
Damon Packard parodies the making of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones
Lovers and Lollipops
Ann, an attractive widowed New York model, lives in an apartment with her daughter Peggy. The courtship of Ann by visiting engineer Larry, and accompanying misadventures, are seen alternately from their and Peggy's viewpoint. Filmed realistically at many New York locations
Guns of the Trees
A depressed woman, Barbara, is on the verge of suicide while a man she meets in a church and a married couple try to convince her that life is worth living.
War Is Menstrual Envy
Set in a post-apocalyptic future, the story finds a handful of ragged survivors attempting to communicate with dolphins, while another cadre of survivors have made it their crusade to destroy all the world's religions.
Let's Scare Julie
When a group of teen girls set out to scare the reclusive girl next door, what seems like a simple prank goes horribly wrong.
The Circle
A frantic young woman begs a stranger to help save her marked husband, not realizing that the stranger is the hit man hired to kill him. Experimental digital movie shot entirely in one take and in real time.
Illuminated Texts
"Breathtaking in its techniques, rhapsodic in its passion, and encyclopedic in its scope, the film traces the long fall from paradise into modern barbarism." - Art Gallery of Ontario
Experimental film consisting of a single static shot of the Empire State Building from early evening until nearly 3 am the next day.
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Empire Starring Jonas Mekas, Andy Warhol, and more. If you liked Empire then you may also like: Zorns Lemma, Vinyl, Visitors, We Can't Go Home Again, Naqoyqatsi and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
Zorns Lemma
Zorns Lemma is a 1970 American structuralist film by Hollis Frampton. It is named after Zorn's lemma (also known as the Kuratowski–Zorn lemma), a proposition of set theory formulated by mathematician Max Zorn in 1935. Zorns Lemma is prefaced with a reading from an early grammar textbook. The remainder of the film, largely silent, shows the viewer an evolving 24-part "alphabet" (where i & j and u & v are interchanged) which is cycled through, replaced and expanded upon. The film's conclusion shows a man, woman and dog walking through snow as several voices read passages from On Light, or the Ingression of Forms by Robert Grosseteste.