In early 1920s Germany, Walther Ruttmann, Hans Richter, and Viking Eggeling premiered films of nothing but form: rectangles breathing, curves in counterpoint, motion structured like music. A 1925 Berlin matinee titled Der absolute Film named the movement.
The claim was that cinema’s essence was organized movement and time, exactly music’s materials, so film could be composed rather than staged. Eggeling’s Symphonie Diagonale and Ruttmann’s Opus films are the movement’s surviving scores.
The absolute filmmakers fed directly into Fischinger, advertising, and eventually every abstract music visual since; the demoscene and shader culture are absolute film with a frame budget.