Bute, Mary Ellen

Mary Ellen Bute was a film animator, director and producer. She was a pioneer in adopting electronic techniques for film animation. Early in her career she made animated films in the "visual music" style that synchronized abstract images and music. Her later films were live action and included adaptations of works by James Joyce and Thornton Wilder.

Bute was born in Houston, Texas in 1906. She studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadephia and lighting design at Yale University. Her early influences included Leon Theremin and Gerald Warburg and she collaborated with Theremin to produce a paper titled "Light as an art material and its possible synchronization with sound" (1932). Most of Bute's films were produced by Ted Nemeth Studios or Expanding Cinema Studios and her collaborators included Norman McLaren and Melville Webber. Later in life Bute was a founding member of the Women's Independent Film Exchange.

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