This essay discusses the evolution of abstract cinema and multimedia in the first half of the 20th century, through the synthesis of film, performances and installations. Beginning in the first two decades of the century, European avant-garde artists influenced by Wagner’s “Gesamtkunstwerk” (Total Artwork) experimented with the relationship of cinema to painting, music, sculpture and other arts. In Germany, this experimentation led to the abstract or “absolute” films of Viking Eggeling, Walther Ruttman, Hans Richter, and Oskar Fischinger. The 1916 Futurist Manifesto in Italy declared that cinema would combine all the arts, and create a new art form.