A Pioneer of Abstract Animation

Synchromy No.2 (1936)

Mary Ellen Bute made 'visual music'. Between 1934 and 1953, she made fourteen short abstract, musical, animated films in collaboration with Joseph Schillinger and, later, with Ted Nemeth, who would become her husband. Many of these films were screened before a feature movie at Radio City Hall in New York. Bute was a founding member of the Women's Independent Film Exchange.
Bute died practically penniless in 1983, sacrificing all for her art.

A short documentary about Mary Ellen Bute