Terms such as absolute film, cinéma pur, true cinema and integral cinema have been used for non-narrative films that aimed to create a purer experience of the distinctive qualities of film, like movement, rhythm and changing visual compositions.
More narrowly, "absolute film" was used for the works of a group of filmmakers in Germany in the 1920s, that consisted, at least initially, of animated films that were totally abstract. The French term cinéma pur was coined to describe the style of several filmmakers in France in the 1920s, whose work was non-narrative, but hardly ever non-figurative.