@tcroelandsveld. Thanks for your question.
No, it is currently not possible to filter an empty list. Also, showing hundreds of documents in a webpage in the form of a table or unordered list is not going to work out well.
I hope that my the end of the first quarter next year, I will provide a “Document Depository” component that will go exactly as you request here. However, none of my current extensions will provide the functionality that you require. I apologize for this inconvenience.