Mary Ellen Bute: Rhythms in Light

Featured are five films that showcase the signature style of “visual music” by early pioneer of experimental film animation, Mary Ellen Bute (American, 1906–1983). Bute created a body of abstract moving image work between 1934 and1959 that is remarkable for its mix of technical and artistic innovations. She also succeeded in forging a barrier-smashing career as a film director at a time when directing opportunities for women were few. The films, presented on a loop, are screened in HD digital format transfers from film courtesy of the Center for Visual Music.

Born in Houston, Texas, Bute showed an early talent for art and left home at age sixteen to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, PA. Inspired by modern art exhibitions from the emerging European avant-garde, she was particularly drawn to paintings by the Russian abstractionist, Wassily Kandinsky. Kandinsky’s swirling, musical forms, which implied movement, ignited Bute’s desire to develop her own system of abstract images, except Bute wanted her designs to have actual movement. Bute began studying at Yale University’s Department of Drama in the School of Fine Arts in 1925, which guided her toward cinema as the medium that could best manifest her ideas. Bute’s first completed film, Rhythm in Light (1934), begins with a title that reads “This film is a pioneer effort in a new art form—it is a modern artist’s impression of what goes on in the mind while listening to music.” This statement describes the body of work that she would develop over the next two decades. Working with mathematical precision, Bute perfected sophisticated systems to synchronize images and music for her animated short films that reached new heights of technical achievement while dazzling audiences with spectacles of light, color, and sound.

Rhythm in Light (Mary Ellen Bute, 1934, 5 min., black and white, sound, originally 35mm film transferred to HD digital) Bute’s first completed film uses Edvard Grieg's Anitra's Dance from Peer Gynt Suite as a soundtrack. Some of the imagery consists of abstract sculptural forms created by Melville Webber, who previously worked with Rochester, NY’s J.S. Watson, Jr. on The Fall of the House of Usher (1928) and Lot in Sodom (1933).

Spook Sport (Mary Ellen Bute, 1939, 9 min., color, sound, originally 35mm film transferred to HD digital) Assisted by the notable Scottish Canadian animator Norman McLaren, Spook Sport features a cast of spirits, bats, and shapes cavorting in a deserted graveyard to Danse macabre, op. 40 by Camille Saint-Saëns. 

Tarantella (Mary Ellen Bute, 1940, 5 min., color, sound, originally 35mm film transferred to HD digital) Tarantella features an array of choreographed colorful shapes that dance a tarantella, a vigorous southern Italian folk dance that some believe could remedy the bite of a venomous spider.

Color Rhapsodie (Mary Ellen Bute, 1948, 6 min., color, sound, originally 35mm film transferred to HD digital) Color Rhapsodie features Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 as the soundtrack. Bute applied an array of techniques which included painted designs on sheets of glass superimposed with cloud forms and exploding fireworks.

Abstronic (Mary Ellen Bute, 1952, 7 min., color, sound, originally 35mm film transferred to HD digital) Working in a new direction, Bute combined her evolved animation technique with new electronic imagery derived from a cathode ray oscilloscope. Aaron Copland's Hoe Down and Don Gillis's Ranch House Party supply the musical accompaniment to the unusual visual designs of Abstronic.