Mary Ellen Bute

Links


Bute: Science and Story
Art Music in the Abstract Animated Films of Oskar Fischinger
and Mary Ellen Bute:  Form, Structure, and Narrative

by Christine Lee Gengaro
Resonance: An Interdisciplinary Music Journal

This informative essay discusses the film's drawings as they are matched to specific movements. The article includes film clips and stills from the film Escape, and from Bute's animated short (with Norman MacLaren),Spook Sport, (see above).  Though Escape follows a triangle trapped by a grid, some of the light movements are reminiscent of the Clavilux.


On the Page / On the Screen:
Two Ways of Reading Joyce

Vickie Olsen, Universidad del Pais Vasco

from the essay:
"This article takes a look at the historiography of the screen adaptations of four Joyce texts: Mary Ellen Bute's film version of Finnegans Wake, Joseph Strick's screen adaptations of Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and John Huston's posthumous film version of The Dead".


Mary Ellen Bute 1906-1983
Research Papers - Center For Visual Music

A comprehensive website offering useful & authoritative information on M.E. Bute, including links, archival materials, and essays on her writings.

Cindy Keefer of CVM lectures on Abstract Film and 'Visual Music', including the films of Oscar Fischinger and Bute.

   


Center for Visual Music
offers an online library and a store. Dedicated
to the promotion and preservation of abstract film. Also offers significant Collections and Archives related to 'visual music, abstract cinema, experimental animation and avant-garde media'. For sale are dvds of 'Color Music', Dada films, Harry Smith, Jordan Belson, and the like.

left, Oskar Fischinger DVD


The iotaCenter
Abstraction | Animation | Music

Iota Center for Abstract Film

from the website:
"a public benefit arts organization devoted to Abstract Cinema and Visual Music.
 We preserve classic abstract films, release DVDs, and produce screenings of
 contemporary and historical work."

Mary Ellen Bute


Mary Ellen Bute: Seeing Sound
by Dr. William Moritz
from: Animation World Magazine
May 1996, Volume 1 - No. 2
note: contains errata




    British T.V. show
"Dope Sheet"

segment on Mary Ellen Bute with
interviews with those who knew her.
via youtube.com


Starr & Russet Experimental Animation Experimental animation :
an illustrated anthology

Robert Russett And Cecile Starr
Van Nostrand Reinhold Co. (1976)

A classic resource for experimental film.               



    Mary Ellen Bute entry
written by film historian Cecile Starr, Page 96 - 98.

Notable American Women:
A Biographical Dictionary, 5, Completing the Twentieth Century
Ed. by Susan Ware and Stacy Braukman
Harvard University Press (2005)

A reliable, biographical entry. This entry is currently available on
Google Books with permission of Harvard University Press.


Mary Ellen Bute Synchromy No. 4

Synchromy No. 4: Escape, 1937
4:30

Mary Ellen Bute and Ted Nemeth.
Music is Toccata in D Minor by J. S. Bach.
ArtForum connects to youtube.com


    Music Made Visible in Weird Movie

from Popular Science, Nov 1936


arsenal experimental

A Platform for Experimental Film, Video and Installation Art
Also an international distributor for M.E.Bute's films


    Colour and Sound : Visual Music
by Maura McDonnell (2002)

A lovely website tracing artists' attempts over the ages to combine music with color. Covers early color-organs & lovely color discs from Thomas Wilfred's Clavilux, and early color music film practioners like Mary Hallock-Greenewalt, who invented the sarabet. Also covers the Futurists, Fischinger, and Len Lye et al.



Film Rental Information:


"Passages from Finnegans Wake"
  
available for rental on 16mm film
from:

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
Film/Video Circulating Library
11 West 53rd Street
New York, NY 10019  
USA
tel:  212-708-9530

       and

Arsenal Experimental
Potsdamer Str. 2
D-10785 Berlin, GERMANY
tel:  +49-30-26955-110
email: nh@fdk-berlin.de

Bute's short, abstract films
  

available for rental on 16mm film
from:

Cecile Starr
35 Strong Street 
Burlington, Vermont 05401 
USA
tel: 802-863-6904
email: a.boyajian@yahoo.com

and

Arsenal Experimental
Potsdamer Str. 2
D-10785 Berlin, GERMANY
tel:  +49-30-26955-110
email: nh@fdk-berlin.de