Mary Ellen Bute
Encyclopedia
Mary Ellen Bute was a pioneer American
film animator
significant as one of the first female experimental filmmakers. Her specialty was visual music
and, while working in New York
between 1934 and 1953, made fourteen short, abstract
musical films. Many of these were seen in regular movie theaters, such as Radio City Music Hall
, usually preceding a prestigious film. Several of her later abstract films were categorized as part of her Seeing Sound series.
A native of Houston, Mary Ellen Bute studied painting in Texas
and, subsequently, Philadelphia, then stage lighting
at Yale University
, focusing her primary interest on the tradition of color organ
s, as a means of painting with light. She worked with Leon Theremin
and Thomas Wilfred
and was also influenced by the abstract animated films of Oskar Fischinger
.
Bute began her filmmaking career collaborating with Joseph Schillinger
on the animation of visuals. Her later films were made in partnership with her cinematographer Ted Nemeth whom she married in 1940. Her final film, inspired by James Joyce
, was Passages from Finnegans Wake
, a live-action feature made over a nearly three-year period in 1965-67.
In the 1960s and 1970s Bute worked on two films which were never completed: an adaptation of Thornton Wilder
's 1942 play The Skin of Our Teeth
, and a film about Walt Whitman
with the working title Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking.
Bute was a founding member of the Women's Independent Film Exchange.
Mary Ellen Bute died of heart failure at New York City's Cabrini Medical Center. She was five weeks short of her 77th birthday. Six months earlier, on April 4, she received a special tribute and a retrospective of her films at the Museum of Modern Art
.
An archive with some of Bute's personal papers is at the Beinecke Library at Yale University
. A finding aid describes this collection. Film historian Cecile Starr has an extensive collection of Bute papers; another collection is at Center for Visual Music in Los Angeles. Several of her films are at the Yale Film Study Center, George Eastman House
, Museum of Modern Art
in New York, Anthology Film Archives
, and a number of other institutions and archives; an entire 16mm collection is with Cecile Starr; and a travelling film show of all of her abstract short 16mm films has been presented since 2006 in the US, Australia and Europe by Center for Visual Music in association with Cecile Starr and The Women's Independent Film Exchange.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
film animator
Animator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...
significant as one of the first female experimental filmmakers. Her specialty was visual music
Visual music
Visual music, sometimes called "colour music," refers to the use of musical structures in visual imagery, which can also include silent films or silent Lumia work. It also refers to methods or devices which can translate sounds or music into a related visual presentation...
and, while working in New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
between 1934 and 1953, made fourteen short, abstract
Abstract film
Abstract film is a subgenre of experimental film. Its history often overlaps with the concerns and history of visual music. Some of the earliest abstract motion pictures known to survive are those produced by a group of German artists working in the early 1920s, a movement referred to as Absolute...
musical films. Many of these were seen in regular movie theaters, such as Radio City Music Hall
Radio City Music Hall
Radio City Music Hall is an entertainment venue located in New York City's Rockefeller Center. Its nickname is the Showplace of the Nation, and it was for a time the leading tourist destination in the city...
, usually preceding a prestigious film. Several of her later abstract films were categorized as part of her Seeing Sound series.
A native of Houston, Mary Ellen Bute studied painting in Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
and, subsequently, Philadelphia, then stage lighting
Stage lighting
Modern stage lighting is a flexible tool in the production of theatre, dance, opera and other performance arts. Several different types of stage lighting instruments are used in the pursuit of the various principles or goals of lighting. Stage lighting has grown considerably in recent years...
at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, focusing her primary interest on the tradition of color organ
Color organ
The term color organ refers to a tradition of mechanical , then electromechanical, devices built to represent sound or to accompany music in a visual medium—by any number of means. In the early 20th century, a silent color organ tradition developed...
s, as a means of painting with light. She worked with Leon Theremin
Léon Theremin
Léon Theremin was a Russian and Soviet inventor. He is most famous for his invention of the theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments. He is also the inventor of interlace, a technique of improving the picture quality of a video signal, widely used in video and television technology...
and Thomas Wilfred
Thomas Wilfred
Thomas Wilfred born Richard Edgar Løvstrom, was a musician and inventor. He is best known for his visual music he named lumia and his designs for color organs called Clavilux...
and was also influenced by the abstract animated films of Oskar Fischinger
Oskar Fischinger
Oskar Fischinger was a German-American abstract animator, filmmaker, and painter. He made over 50 short animated films, and painted c. 800 canvases, many of which are in museums, galleries and collections worldwide. Among his film works is Motion Painting No. 1 , which is now listed on the...
.
Bute began her filmmaking career collaborating with Joseph Schillinger
Joseph Schillinger
Joseph Schillinger was a composer, music theorist, and composition teacher. He was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine and died in New York City.-Life and career:...
on the animation of visuals. Her later films were made in partnership with her cinematographer Ted Nemeth whom she married in 1940. Her final film, inspired by James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, was Passages from Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish author James Joyce, significant for its experimental style and resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's...
, a live-action feature made over a nearly three-year period in 1965-67.
In the 1960s and 1970s Bute worked on two films which were never completed: an adaptation of Thornton Wilder
Thornton Wilder
Thornton Niven Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He received three Pulitzer Prizes, one for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and two for his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and a National Book Award for his novel The Eighth Day.-Early years:Wilder was born in Madison,...
's 1942 play The Skin of Our Teeth
The Skin of Our Teeth
The Skin of Our Teeth is a play by Thornton Wilder which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It opened on October 15, 1942 at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, before moving to the Plymouth Theatre on Broadway on November 18, 1942...
, and a film about Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
with the working title Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking.
Bute was a founding member of the Women's Independent Film Exchange.
Mary Ellen Bute died of heart failure at New York City's Cabrini Medical Center. She was five weeks short of her 77th birthday. Six months earlier, on April 4, she received a special tribute and a retrospective of her films at the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
.
An archive with some of Bute's personal papers is at the Beinecke Library at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
. A finding aid describes this collection. Film historian Cecile Starr has an extensive collection of Bute papers; another collection is at Center for Visual Music in Los Angeles. Several of her films are at the Yale Film Study Center, George Eastman House
George Eastman House
The George Eastman House is the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography and one of the world's oldest film archives, opened to the public in 1949 in Rochester, New York, USA. World-renowned for its photograph and motion picture archives, the museum is also a leader in film preservation and...
, Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
in New York, Anthology Film Archives
Anthology Film Archives
__notoc__Anthology Film Archives is a film archive and theater located at 32 Second Avenue on the corner of East Second Street in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City devoted to the preservation and exhibition of experimental film. It is the only non-profit organization of its...
, and a number of other institutions and archives; an entire 16mm collection is with Cecile Starr; and a travelling film show of all of her abstract short 16mm films has been presented since 2006 in the US, Australia and Europe by Center for Visual Music in association with Cecile Starr and The Women's Independent Film Exchange.
Filmography
There have been discrepancies over the dating of Mary Ellen Bute's films, primarily due to inaccuracies in published in online articles and websites. The dates below are verified by documents from her distributor and the Center for Visual Music.- Synchromy – 1933, collaboration with Joseph Schillinger and Lewis Jacobs [unfinished]
- Rhythm in Light – 1934 (b&w, 5 min.) in collaboration with Melville Webber and Ted Nemeth
- Synchromy No. 2 – 1935 (b&w, 5.5 min.) Music: Evening Star from Tannhäuser by Richard WagnerRichard WagnerWilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
- Dada – 1936 (b&w) – 3-minute short for Universal NewsreelUniversal NewsreelUniversal Newsreel was a series of 7- to 10-minute newsreels that were released twice a week between 1929 and 1967 by Universal Studios. A Universal publicity official, Sam B. Jacobson, was involved in originating and producing the newsreels...
. - Parabola – 1937 (b&w, 9 min.) Music: Création du monde by Darius MilhaudDarius MilhaudDarius Milhaud was a French composer and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as The Group of Six—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and make use of polytonality...
. - Escape – 1937 (color, 4.5 min.) Music: Toccata in D Minor by J.S. Bach.
- Spook Sport – 1939, (color, 8 min.) Music: Danse macabre by Camille Saint-SaënsCamille Saint-SaënsCharles-Camille Saint-Saëns was a French Late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony...
. Animation by Norman McLarenNorman McLarenNorman McLaren, CC, CQ was a Scottish-born Canadian animator and film director known for his work for the National Film Board of Canada...
. - TarantellaTarantella (film)Tarantella is a five-minute color, avant-garde short film created by Mary Ellen Bute, a pioneer of visual music and electronic art in experimental cinema...
– 1940, color, 5 mins. - Polka Graph – 1947, color, 4.5 mins. Dmitri ShostakovichDmitri ShostakovichDmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
's Polka from The Age of Gold - Color Rhapsody (aka Color Rhapsodie) – 1948, color, 6 mins.
- Imagination – 1948, color
- New Sensations in Sound – 1949, color, 3 mins. [advertising film for RCARCARCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
] - Pastorale – 1950, color, 9 mins. Bach's Sheep May Safely Graze
- Abstronic – 1952, color, 7 mins. Aaron CoplandAaron CoplandAaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...
's Hoe Down and Don Gillis's Ranch House Party - Mood Contrasts – 1953, color, 7 mins.
- The Boy Who Saw Through – 1956 (producer), b/w, 25 mins. Stars a young Christopher WalkenChristopher WalkenChristopher Walken is an American stage and screen actor. He has appeared in more than 100 movies and television shows, including Joe Dirt, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter, The Prophecy trilogy, The Dogs of War, Sleepy Hollow, Brainstorm, The Dead Zone, A View to a Kill, At Close Range, King of New...
. [not abstract] - Passages from Finnegans Wake – 1965-67, b&w, 97 mins. (director and co-writer) [not abstract] Screened at the Cannes Film FestivalCannes Film FestivalThe Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
External links
- Mary Ellen Bute: Seeing Sound
- CVM's Bute site including extensive Bibliography and texts by Bute
- Mary Ellen Bute, Film Maker (age is given, apparently erroneously, as 79), New York Times obituary of] October 19, 1983)
- A guide to the Mary Ellen Bute Papers at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
- A guide to the Cecile Starr Papers Relating to Mary Ellen Bute at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library