What do you call this kind of movie?

Documentary. Vertoz is ahead of is time. It's an avant-garde documentary. These kind of documentary are called "Cinéma-vérité" (vérité means truth) in Québec. The name Vertoz is not his real name. Vertoz means "Truth"... Watch documentarys from Michel Breault, Michel Groulx, Pierre Perrault and Claude Jutra. They made many in the 60's in Quebec. This "cinéma vérité" is better known by the name "Cinéma Direct". Direct in the attitude and technique.

I believe vertov himself called it a "kinograph" which is what I like to call it. (kino meaning motion, graph meaning write, as in photograph) or you could call it a cinematograph.
ive heard films like it such as Koyaanisqatsi and Baraka called "non-verbal documentaries" which is a workable description I suppose but a bit too prosaic for me.
Though I'm not sure I'd call them "documentaries" as such, either. certainly when I describe Baraka to people I don't call it a documentary.

"people who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree"

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I don't know that it has a widely accepted name. I've heard them called visual tone poems, but I prefer to call them "symphonies in film". Other movies I'd put in that category are Ruttmann's "Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt" (1927) and Perrin, Cluzaud and Debats' "Le Peuple Migrateur" (2001).

City symphony is the genre. It was originally used in 1926 when the first city symphony was made, Rien que les heures, by French avantgardists Alberto Cavalcanti.

Of course it's impossible to say for sure who used it first but according to my knowledge here it is:

"Paris is dominated by strong contrasts: ugliness and beauty, richness and poverty, hope and fears. For the first time there was a reason to use the word 'symphony' instead of a 'story'." John Grierson. (comment on Rien que les heures/Nothing But Time)



"I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle"