Mary Ellen Bute (1906 – 1983) was a pioneer American film animator, producer, and director. Her specialty was visual music. While working in New York City between 1934 and 1953, Bute made fourteen short abstract musical films. Many of these were seen in regular movie theaters usually preceding a prestigious film.
- Synchromy – 1933, collaboration with Joseph Schillinger and Lewis Jacobs [unfinished].
- Rhythm in Light – 1934 (b&w, 5 min.) in collaboration with Melville Webber and Ted Nemeth.
- Synchromy No. 2 – 1935 (b&w, 5.5 min.) music: Evening Star from Tannhäuser by Richard Wagner.
- Dada – 1936 (b&w, 3min.) short for Universal Newsreel.
- Parabola – 1937 (b&w, 9 min.) music: Création du monde by Darius Milhaud.
- Escape – 1937 (color, 4.5 min.) music: Toccata in D Minor by J.S. Bach.
- Spook Sport – 1939 (color, 8 min.) music: Danse macabre by Camille Saint-Saëns. Animation by Norman McLaren.
- Tarantella – 1940 (color, 5 min.) animation by Norman McLaren.
- Polka Graph – 1947 (color, 4.5 min.) music: Dmitri Shostakovich‘s Polka from The Age of Gold.
- Color Rhapsodie – 1948 (color, 6 min.)
- Imagination – 1948 (color)
- New Sensations in Sound – 1949 (color, 3 min.) advertising film for RCA.
- Pastorale – 1950 (color, 9 min.) music: Bach’s Sheep May Safely Graze.
- Abstronic – 1952 (color, 7 min.) music: Aaron Copland‘s Hoe Down and Don Gillis‘s Ranch House Party.
- Mood Contrasts – 1953 (color, 7 min.)
- The Boy Who Saw Through – 1956 (b&w, 25 min.) (producer) stars a young Christopher Walken [not abstract].
- Passages from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake – 1965–67 (b&w, 97 min.) (director and co-writer) screened at the Cannes Film Festival [not abstract].