‘A pioneer of visual music and electronic art, Mary Ellen Bute produced over a dozen short abstract animations between the 1930s to the 1950s. Set to classical music by the likes of Bach, Saint-Saens or Shostakovich, and filled with colourful forms, elegant design and sprightly, dance-like-rhythms, Bute’s filmmaking is at once formally rigorous and energetically high-spirited, like a marriage of high modernism and Merrie Melodies.’ Ed Halter
Mary Ellen Bute All ages 79 minutes
Fri 2 May 6.00pm / Cinema A (Introduced by Cindy Keefer, Center for Visual Music)
Rhythm in Light 1934
16MM, BLACK AND WHITE, MONO, 5 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: MARY ELLEN BUTE WITH MELVILLE WEBBER AND TED NEMETH / MUSIC: GRIEG
Synchromy No. 2 1935
16MM, BLACK AND WHITE, MONO, 5 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: MARY ELLEN BUTE WITH TED NEMETH / MUSIC: WAGNER
Dada 1936
16MM, BLACK AND WHITE, MONO, 3 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: MARY ELLEN BUTE
Parabola 1937
16MM, BLACK AND WHITE, MONO, 9 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: MARY ELLEN BUTE WITH TED NEMETH, RUTHERFORD BOYD AND BILL NEMETH / DARIUS MILHAUD
Escape 1937
16MM, COLOUR, MONO, 5 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: MARY ELLEN BUTE / MUSIC: BACH
Spook Sport 1939
16MM, COLOUR, MONO, 8 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: MARY ELLEN BUTE / ANIMATION: NORMAN MCLAREN / MUSIC: SAINT-SAENS
Tarantella 1940
16MM, COLOUR, MONO, 5 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: MARY ELLEN BUTE
Polka Graph (Fun with Music) 1947
16MM, COLOUR, MONO, 5 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: MARY ELLEN BUTE / MUSIC: SHOSTAKOVICH
Colour Rhapsody 1948
16MM, COLOUR, MONO, 6 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: MARY ELLEN BUTE / MUSIC: LISZT
Imagination 1948
16MM, COLOUR, MONO, 3 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: MARY ELLEN BUTE
Pastorale 1950
16MM, COLOUR, MONO, 8 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: MARY ELLEN BUTE / MUSIC: BACH
Abstronic 1952
16MM, COLOUR, MONO, 7 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: MARY ELLEN BUTE / MUSIC: AARON COPLAND AND DON GILLIS
Mood Contrasts 1953
16MM, COLOUR, MONO, 5 MINUTES, USA / DIRECTOR: MARY ELLEN BUTE / MUSIC: RIMSKY-KORSAKOV
Mary-Ellen Bute program provided by Center for Visual Music in association with Cecile Starr and the Women’s Independent Film Exchange.
