Mary Ellen Bute

Mary Ellen Bute

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 colorful 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. In the late 1940s, Lewis Jacobs observed that Bute's films were "composed upon mathematical formulae depicting in ever-changing lights and shadows, growing lines and forms, deepening colors and tones, the tumbling, racing impressions evoked by the musical accompaniment." Bute herself wrote that she sought to "bring to the eyes a combination of visual forms unfolding along with the thematic development and rhythmic cadences of music." (Ed Halter) Known for her pioneering early abstract films (some of which were screened regularly at Radio City Music Hall, New York in the 1930s), Bute made a series of Visual Music films which she called "Seeing Sound."

  • Title: Mary Ellen Bute
  • Popularity: 0.052
  • Known For: Directing
  • Birthday: 1906-11-21
  • Place of Birth: Houston, Texas
  • Homepage:
  • Also Known As:
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Mary Ellen Bute Movies

  • 1956
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    New Sensations in Sound by RCA Victor

    New Sensations in Sound by RCA Victor

    1 1956 HD

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  • 1940
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    Tarantella

    Tarantella

    5.6 1940 HD

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  • 1967
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    Passages from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake

    Passages from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake

    8.2 1967 HD

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  • 1936
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    Dada

    Dada

    7 1936 HD

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  • 1935
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    Synchromy No. 2

    Synchromy No. 2

    7.8 1935 HD

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  • 1934
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    Rhythm in Light

    Rhythm in Light

    6.7 1934 HD

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  • 1940
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    Spook Sport

    Spook Sport

    5.9 1940 HD

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  • 1937
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    Escape (Synchronomy No. 4)

    Escape (Synchronomy No. 4)

    7.1 1937 HD

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  • 1937
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    Parabola

    Parabola

    5.7 1937 HD

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  • 1948
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    Color Rhapsodie

    Color Rhapsodie

    3 1948 HD

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  • 1967
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    Passages from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake

    Passages from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake

    8.2 1967 HD

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  • 1967
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    Passages from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake

    Passages from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake

    8.2 1967 HD

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  • 1956
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    The Boy Who Saw Through

    The Boy Who Saw Through

    1 1956 HD

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  • 1952
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    Abstronic

    Abstronic

    6.6 1952 HD

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  • 1937
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    Escape (Synchronomy No. 4)

    Escape (Synchronomy No. 4)

    7.1 1937 HD

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  • 1947
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    Polka Graph

    Polka Graph

    1 1947 HD

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  • 1950
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    Pastorale

    Pastorale

    1 1950 HD

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  • 1967
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    Passages from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake

    Passages from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake

    8.2 1967 HD

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  • 1958
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    Mood Contrasts

    Mood Contrasts

    1 1958 HD

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  • 1967
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    Passages from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake

    Passages from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake

    8.2 1967 HD

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