Updated 11-18-23.

I created this list because I started losing track of the fantastic short films out there and wanted to find a better way to represent them - also, since my own top ten list 'rules' exclude shorts (and anything that showed on TV), I felt guilty about not including them somewhere. So here's a handful of obscure / not obscure treasures to fill brief minutes with joy. For the sake of sanity, I'm limiting the number of works on here by some of our mavericks from the silent era (you know the names). Entries with a "*" are music videos and those with a "~" are advertisements.

  • A Trip to the Moon (1902, Georges Méliès)
  • The Living Playing Cards (1904, Georges Méliès)
  • For His Son (1912, D.W. Griffith)
  • The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1913, D.W. Griffith)
  • Behind the Screen (1916, Charles Chaplin)
  • One A.M. (1916, Charles Chaplin)
  • Coney Island (1917, Roscoe Arbuckle)
  • Number, Please? (1920, Hal Roach)
  • La Souriante Madame Beudet (1922, Germaine Dulac)
  • The Frogs Who Wanted a King (1923, Wladyslaw Starewicz)
  • Entr'acte (1924, René Clair)
  • The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928, Germaine Dulac)
  • Un Chien Andalou (1929, Luis Buñuel)
  • The Mascot (1933, Wladyslaw Starewicz)
  • I Love to Singa (1936, Tex Avery)
  • Rose Hobart (1936, Joseph Cornell)
  • The Tell-Tale Heart (1941, Jules Dassin)
  • Meshes of the Afternoon (1943, Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid)
  • At Land (1944, Maya Deren)
  • Fireworks (1947, Kenneth Anger)
  • People of the Po Valley (1947, Michelangelo Antonioni)
  • Bad Luck Blackie (1949, Tex Avery)
  • Begone Dull Care (1949, Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart)
  • Blood of the Beasts (1949, Georges Franju)
  • The Story of the Bass Cello (1949, Jiří Trnka)
  • Un Chant d'Amour (1950, Jean Genet)
  • Neighbours (1952, Norman McLaren)
  • La Villa Santo Sospir (1952, Jean Cocteau)
  • Les Statues Meurent Aussi (1953, Chris Marker and Alain Resnais)
  • Night and Fog (1955, Alain Resnais)
  • Toute la Mémoire du Monde (1956, Alain Resnais)
  • Schwechater (1958, Peter Kubelka)~
  • Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958, Roman Polanski)
  • All the Boys Are Called Patrick (1959, Jean-Luc Godard)
  • On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Unity of Time (1959, Guy Debord)
  • The Steamroller and the Violin (1960, Andrei Tarkovsky)
  • La Jetée (1962, Chris Marker)
  • Christmas on Earth (1963, Barbara Rubin)
  • The House Is Black (1963, Forugh Farrokhzad)
  • Vapors (1963, Andy Milligan)
  • Samuel Beckett's Film (1965, Alan Schneider)
  • The Hand (1965, Jiří Trnka)
  • Oh Dem Watermelons (1965, Robert Nelson)
  • Bob Dylan, "Subterranean Homesick Blues" (1965, D.A. Pennebaker)*
  • Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times) (1966, David Lynch)
  • Unsere Afrikareise (1966, Peter Kubelka)
  • Anticipation (1967, Jean-Luc Godard)
  • The Big Shave (1967, Martin Scorsese)
  • Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969, Kenneth Anger)
  • T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G (1969, Paul Sharits)
  • Serene Velocity (1970, Ernie Gehr)
  • THX1138:EB (1970, George Lucas)
  • Bleu Shut (1971, Robert Nelson)
  • (nostalgia) (1971, Hollis Frampton)
  • Thank You Mask Man (1971, Lenny Bruce and John Magnuson)
  • Yuki's Sun (1972, Hayao Miyazaki)
  • Marilyn Times Five (1973, Bruce Conner)
  • The Virgin Sacrifice (1974, J.X. Williams)
  • La Soufriére (1977, Werner Herzog)
  • Take the 5:10 to Dreamland (1977, Bruce Conner)
  • LMNO (1978, Robert Breer)
  • Story Time (1979, Terry Gilliam)
  • The Metaphor (1980, King Vidor)
  • The Garden of Earthly Delights (1981, Stan Brakhage)
  • Vincent (1982, Tim Burton)
  • Barres (1984, Luc Moullet)
  • The Book of Mary (1984, Anne-Marie Miéville)
  • The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer (1984, The Brothers Quay)
  • Ghost (1984, Takashi Ito)
  • Apocalypse Pooh (1987, Todd Graham)
  • The Dante Quartet (1987, Stan Brakhage)
  • Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies (1987, The Brothers Quay)
  • Darkness/Light/Darkness (1989, Jan Svankmajer)
  • Depeche Mode, "Enjoy the Silence" (1990, Anton Corbijn)*
  • Carne (1991, Gaspar Noé)
  • A Place Called Lovely (1991, Sadie Benning)
  • U2, "One" (1991, Anton Corbijn)*
  • Food (1992, Jan Svankmajer)
  • Side/Walk/Shuttle (1992, Ernie Gehr)
  • The Wrong Trousers (1993, Nick Park)
  • Bottle Rocket (1994, Wes Anderson)
  • A Close Shave (1995, Nick Park)
  • Premonitions Following an Evil Deed (1995, David Lynch)
  • The Spirit of Christmas (1995, Trey Parker and Matt Stone)
  • Fiona Apple, "Criminal" (1996, Mark Romanek)*
  • The Georgetown Loop (1996, Ken Jacobs)
  • The Prodigy, "Smack My Bitch Up" (1997, Jonas Åkerlund)*
  • The Verve, "Bittersweet Symphony" (1997, Walter Stern)*
  • Björk, "All Is Full of Love" (1998, Chris Cunningham)*
  • Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy (1998, Martin Arnold)
  • Billy's Balloon (1998, Don Hertzfeldt)
  • Genesis (1998, Nacho Cerdà)
  • Outer Space (1999, Peter Tscherkassky)
  • Pulp, "This Is Hardcore" (1999, Doug Nichol)*
  • Breath (2000, Damien Hirst)
  • The Heart of the World (2000, Guy Maddin)
  • Origin of the 21st Century (2000, Jean-Luc Godard)
  • Rejected (2000, Don Hertzfeldt)
  • DJ Shadow, "Six Days" (2002, Wong Kar-Wai)*
  • The Skywalk Is Gone (2002, Tsai Ming-Liang)
  • The Order: From Cremaster 3 (2003, Matthew Barney)
  • Super Mario Clouds (2003, Cory Arcangel)
  • Light Is Calling (2004, Bill Morrison)
  • TV on the Radio, "Staring at the Sun" (2004, Elliot Jokelson)*
  • Autobiographical Scene Number 6882 (2005, Ruben Östlund)
  • The Madagascar Penguins in a Christmas Caper (2005, Gary Trousdale)
  • Rest Stop (2005, Roseanne Liang)
  • 14th Arrondissement (2006, Alexander Payne)
  • Pink (2006, Charlie White)~
  • SIDA (2006, Gaspar Noé)
  • Tuileries (2006, Joel and Ethan Coen)
  • I've Never Had Sex... (2007, Robert Kennedy)
  • White Out (2007, Jeff Scher)
  • 1859 (2008, Fred Worden)
  • Please Say Something (2008, David O'Reilly)
  • Presto (2008, Doug Sweetland)
  • Levi's America (Go Forth) (2009, Cary Fukunaga)~
  • The External World (2010, David O'Reilly)
  • Coorow-Latham Road (2011, Blake Williams)
  • Junior (2011, Julia Ducournau)
  • The Strange Thing About the Johnsons (2011, Ari Aster)
  • A Brief History of John Baldessari (2012, Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman)
  • Lana Del Rey, "Video Games" (2012, Lana Del Rey)*
  • Headlong (2012, Lukas Dhont)
  • O Is for Orgasm (2012, Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani)
  • Omelette (2013, Madeline Sharafian)
  • How to Keep Smoking (2014, John Wilson)
  • Too Many Cooks (2014, Casper Kelly)
  • The Exquisite Corpus (2015, Peter Tscherkassky)
  • I, Dalio (2015, Mark Rappaport)
  • No No Sleep (2015, Tsai Ming-Liang)
  • C'est La Vie (2016, Ari Aster)
  • The Spiritual Life of Wholesale Goods (2016, John Wilson)
  • St. Vincent, "New York" (2017, Alex Da Corte)*
  • Ghost Choir (2018, Louie Zong)
  • Purl (2018, Kristen Lester)
  • The Human Voice (2020, Pedro Almodóvar)
  • Mouse of Silver (2020, Pendleton Ward and Mike L. Mayfield)
  • New York New York (2020, Spike Lee)
  • Ride It Out (2020, Ana Lily Amirpour)
  • Bad Travelling (2022, David Fincher)
  • We Don't Talk Like We Used To (2023, Joshua Gen Solondz)
  • The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (2023, Wes Anderson)