The film Symphonie Diagonale (Diagonal symphony), by the swedish Viking Eggeling, released in 1924, and made in collaboration with his friend and companion Dadaist Hans Richter, is one of the first abstract films in the history of cinema: based on rhythmic sequences of lines, volumes and shapes. Their title of symphony, as a work that refers to the musical art is well awarded, since it is built according to concepts and purely musical procedures; in particular, it would be very close to the form of "visual motet", since, in reality, a certain amount is used of "subjects" or "motives" to which the orthodox procedures of academic counterpoint are applied: direct repetition, inversion (in two directions: horizontal and vertical), retrogradation and, instead of retrogradation of inversion, inversion to the left, only possible in a spatial art, and not in the time of music. Imitations by augmentation and diminution, among others, are also used. also the word diagonal of the title is clarifying, because almost all the motifs work their content on a diagonal plane (a "symphony of diagonals" would be our interpretation, perhaps). The canonical imitation, in which an image complements itself, occupies important moments in the piece.