Tarantella

Mary Ellen Bute / United States / 1940 / 5 min.

synopsis

Images: © Center for Visual Music, Los Angeles

A brisk tarantella dance, interpreted on the piano by Edwin Gerschefski, translated into dancing circles, segments, points and curves. The staccato movement of geometric coloured forms, reminiscent of Kandinsky's paintings, is interspersed with more lyrical, “fluid” graphics of smoothly changing, elusive form.

biography

Mary Ellen Bute (1906–1983) was an American animator and pioneer of electronic film. In her works, she experimented with various methods of translating the language of music into a language of abstract shapes, lines and colours. In the 1930s, she collaborated with Leon Theremin, with whom she attempted to machine-synchronise light and sound circuits. In the 1950s, she began to explore the artistic possibilities of working with electrons. In 2022, Ji.hlava IDFF screened her short film Rhythm in Light (1934).