Best Experimental Movies & TV Shows

A 24-hour compendium of time-themed film clips, all synched to the time that appears on the clocks and watches within.

Otherworldly frequencies and textured, fluctuating images beautifully visualize the distress of people who suffer from electromagnetic hypersensitivity, and who must live in exile from cities in order to find solitude from the noise.

An eight-hour contemplative epic, entirely starring sheep.

Stephanie, a restless and vibrant actress, meets Gerard, an NYPD counter-terrorism specialist who’s an aficionado of experimental theater (and maybe out of his mind). Flirtation ensues, ends disastrously, and forces Stephanie to the ramshackle home of musician Eleanor Friedberger, a supposed escape infected by violent memories of her past life.

An epic portrait of the New York avant-garde art scene of the 60s.

The 'Bad Batch' of elite and experimental clones make their way through an ever-changing galaxy in the immediate aftermath of the Clone Wars.

Ruthless silver miner, turned oil prospector, Daniel Plainview, moves to oil-rich California. Using his son to project a trustworthy, family-man image, Plainview cons local landowners into selling him their valuable properties for a pittance. However, local preacher Eli Sunday suspects Plainview's motives and intentions, starting a slow-burning feud that threatens both their lives.

Three friends take a dark journey into murder, mayhem and movie-making in this raw and unflinching experimental feature film.

One woman's journey to discover the truth about Synanon, the experimental community that turned into a full-blown cult.

Isabella Rossellini is convinced that, in the maternal animal world, anything goes. 'Mammas,' a series of short videos, has Rossellini playing the role of nine different animals to show the viewer that some mothers lie, are polygamous, and walk out on their animal children all the time.

In early 2010 the Alloy Orchestra was commissioned an original score, based on a musical setting drawn on a 3-foot long sheet of squared notebook paper. Its operating principle was a fixed tempo - 60 beats per minute - to be strictly followed by the musicians throughout the piece. Within this grid, the performers were given complete freedom to determine the timbre, the volume and the sequence of themes to be chosen for their work. Two artists - a drummer and a draughtsman - listened to the recording of the music without any knowledge of the instructions provided for its creation. Unbeknownst to each other, both were given the task of playing along with their respective instruments: one with a drum in front of a camera, the other with pen, brushes, ink and colored pigments on 35mm film strips. The footage was assembled and edited in strict adherence to the criteria adopted for the music. The Alloy Orchestra was then asked to accompany the film with their own score

Four landscape shots containing a replica of Ted Kaczynski’s cabin, one shot per season. On the soundtrack, Benning reads extracts from Kaczynski’s journals from the early 1970s, recording his progress at hunting and gathering, and his connection to the Montana wilderness; a hand-written folded sheet of paper detailing his acts of “monkey wrenching” and first attempts at planting bombs; two notebooks written in numerical code in 1985 and decoded by Benning in 2011; two excepts from Industrial Society and Its Future by "FC" (aka the Unabomber Manifesto) as published in The New York Times and The Washington Post in 1995; and a 2001 interview with Kaczynski by J. Alienus Rychalski, special correspondent for the Blackfoot Valley Dispatch.

The daily lives of prisoners in Emerald City, an experimental unit of the Oswald Maximum Security Prison where ingroups - Muslims, Latinos, Italians, Aryans - stick close to their mutual friends and terrorize their mutual enemies.

Bill struggles to put together his shattered psyche, in this feature film version of Don Hertzfeldt's animated short film trilogy.

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.

Young Vincent Malloy dreams of being just like Vincent Price and loses himself in macabre daydreams that annoy his mother.

Documentary following a generation of post-punk musicians who took the synthesiser from the experimental fringes to the centre of the pop stage.

A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.

A freak accident during an experimental space mission catapults Astronaut John Crichton across a thousand galaxies to an alien battlefield.

Physicists Leonard and Sheldon find their nerd-centric social circle with pals Howard and Raj expanding when aspiring actress Penny moves in next door.

While the rest of America slept, DIY filmmaker/musician Giuseppe Andrews has made over 30 experimental features. Set in some demented alternate universe (i.e. Ventura, California), they are populated by real-life alcoholics and drug addicts, trash-talking senior citizens and trailer park residents dressed in cow outfits and costume-shop wigs. Director Adam Rifkin creates a wildly surreal, outrageously funny and strangely touching portrait of a truly Outsider Artist inhabiting a world few of us even know exists.

A bullied teen receives mysterious help from someone online: a stranger soon revealed to be her recently deceased father, David, whose consciousness has been uploaded to the Cloud following an experimental destructive brain scan. David is the first of a new kind of being – an “Uploaded Intelligence” or “UI” – but he will not be the last, as a global conspiracy unfolds that threatens to trigger a new kind of world war.

If you could tell any story with the team of talented artists at Walt Disney Animation Studios, what would you create? Welcome to Short Circuit, an experimental, innovative program where anyone at the Studio can pitch an idea and get selected to create their own short film.

A barren soundstage is stylishly utilized to create a minimalist small-town setting in which a mysterious woman named Grace hides from the criminals who pursue her. The town is two-faced and offers to harbor Grace as long as she can make it worth their effort, so Grace works hard under the employ of various townspeople to win their favor. Tensions flare, however, and Grace's status as a helpless outsider provokes vicious contempt and abuse from the citizens of Dogville.

Dr. Malcolm Sayer, a shy research physician, uses an experimental drug to "awaken" the catatonic victims of a rare disease. Leonard is the first patient to receive the controversial treatment. His awakening, filled with awe and enthusiasm, proves a rebirth for Sayer too, as the exuberant patient reveals life's simple but unutterably sweet pleasures to the introverted doctor.

When Jack and Beata Kowalski are wrongfully accused of child abuse after their 10-year-old daughter Maya visits the ER, a nightmare unfolds.

It's the 1960s. The height of the Cold War. The rural town of Granite Flats, Colorado, suddenly becomes a hotbed for mystery and intrigue. Almost a year after Hershel Jenkins was released from jail, mystery is still a permanent resident in Granite Flats, Colorado. From small concerns plaguing the citizens of the small town to ongoing FBI investigations, Arthur, Timmy, and Madeline are eager to put their developing detective skills to the test. Their sleuthing goes further than ever before, and they may be biting off more than they can chew. And as it turns out, sleuthing is a family affair. The parents of all three miniature detectives have dipped their toes in the water. Chief Sanders works side by side with the FBI to find a citizen who is disloyal to the country, Beth is embroiled in the center of experimental work at the hospital, and the Doctors Andrews are the masterminds behind the shady experiments. This season, everyone has got a secret and nobody is ready to admit it.

Double Tide documents the work of a female clam digger in the mudflats of coastal Maine and is filmed on the rare occasion in which low tide occurs twice within daylight hours—once at dawn and once at dusk.

A woman returning home falls asleep and has vivid dreams that may or may not be happening in reality. Through repetitive images and complete mismatching of the objective view of time and space, her dark inner desires play out on-screen.

When Jessica Drew was bitten by a poisonous spider as a child, her father saved her life by injecting her with an experimental "spider serum," which also granted her superhuman powers. As an adult, Jessica works as editor of Justice Magazine but when trouble arises, Jessica slips away to change into her secret identity of Spider-Woman.

Jakob arrives at the Institute Benjamenta (run by brother and sister Johannes and Lisa Benjamenta) to learn to become a servant. With seven other men, he studies under Lisa: absurd lessons of movement, drawing circles, and servility. He asks for a better room. No other students arrive and none leave for employment. Johannes is unhappy, imperious, and detached from the school's operation. Lisa is beautiful, at first tightly controlled, then on the verge of breakdown. There's a whiff of incest. Jakob is drawn to Lisa, and perhaps she to him. As winter sets in, she becomes catatonic. Things get worse; Johannes notes that all this has happened since Jakob came. Is there any cause and effect?

The Time Tunnel is a 1966–1967 U.S. color science fiction TV series, written around a theme of time travel adventure. The show was creator-producer Irwin Allen's third science fiction television series, released by 20th Century Fox and broadcast on ABC. The show ran for one season of 30 episodes. Reruns are viewable on cable and by internet streaming. A pilot for a new series was produced in 2002, although it was not picked up.

Mary Rafferty comes from a poor family of steel mill workers in 19th Century Pittsburgh. Her family objects when she goes to work as a maid for the wealthy Scott family which controls the mill. Mary catches the attention of handsome scion Paul Scott, but their romance is complicated by Paul's engagement to someone else and a bitter strike among the mill workers.

A tormented jazz musician finds himself lost in an enigmatic story involving murder, surveillance, gangsters, doppelgängers, and an impossible transformation inside a prison cell.

Working in Dr. Cranley's laboratory, scientist Jack Griffin was always given the latitude to conduct some of his own experiments. His sudden departure, however, has Cranley's daughter Flora worried about him. Griffin has taken a room at the nearby Lion's Head Inn, hoping to reverse an experiment he conducted on himself that made him invisible. But the experimental drug has also warped his mind, making him aggressive and dangerous. He's prepared to do whatever it takes to restore his appearance.

As part of a deal with an intelligence agency to look for his missing brother, a renegade pilot goes on missions with an advanced battle helicopter.

A brutal mugging leaves Grey Trace paralyzed in the hospital and his beloved wife dead. A billionaire inventor soon offers Trace a cure — an artificial intelligence implant called STEM that will enhance his body. Now able to walk, Grey finds that he also has superhuman strength and agility — skills he uses to seek revenge against the thugs who destroyed his life.

Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, apparently playing themselves, share their lives over the course of an evening meal at a restaurant.

In this Oscar-winning short film, Norman McLaren employs the principles normally used to put drawings or puppets into motion to animate live actors. The story is a parable about two people who come to blows over the possession of a flower.

First time father Henry Spencer tries to survive his industrial environment, his angry girlfriend, and the unbearable screams of his newly born mutant child.

Emily is a patient at an experimental psychiatric facility where a brain implant prototype allows her to relive her dreams.

Dr. Paolo Macchiarini is world famous for his revolutionary stem cell-infused windpipe transplants. There's just one problem: His patients keep dying.

'The Shadow of the Sun' draws upon Derek Jarman’s interest with alchemical processes as a metaphor for reprocessing Super-8 film. Jarman once described film’s union of light and matter as “an alchemical conjunction” and experimented throughout his career with creating dream symbolism through the superimposition of image and action. Originally called English Apocalypse, the film’s final title is derived from a 17th Century alchemical text that used the phrase as a synonym for the philosopher’s stone – the highly sought substance that turns base metals into gold and silver. The film was intended as a step toward the idea of an ambient video, that like its musical counterpart, was designed to enhance an environment.

A ghost and a French marquis wander through the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, encountering scenes from many different periods of its history.

This psychedelic tour of life after death is seen entirely from the point of view of Oscar, a young American drug dealer and addict living in Tokyo with his prostitute sister, Linda. When Oscar is killed by police during a bust gone bad, his spirit journeys from the past -- where he sees his parents before their deaths -- to the present -- where he witnesses his own autopsy -- and then to the future, where he looks out for his sister from beyond the grave.

A hilarious collection of animated television commercials that were rejected because of their creator's failing grip on sanity. 2001 Academy Award nominee for Best Animated Short Film.

An exploration of technologically developing nations and the effect the transition to Western-style modernization has had on them.

An “experimental soap opera” centered on a Harlem nurse, her husband, her father-in-law, and her lover.

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.

Brian Finch's life takes an extraordinary turn when he uses NZT-48, a neuroenhancing drug whose mystery and chaos lead him to working for the FBI and a senator who is not what he seems.