Mary Ellen Bute

Tarantella (1940)



As with many pioneer animators, Mary Ellen Bute is hardly known today, primarily because her films are not easily available in good prints. This was not always true. During a 25-year period, from 1934 until about 1959, the 11 abstract films she made played in regular movie theaters around the country, usually as the short with a first-run prestige feature, such as Mary of Scotland, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, or Hans Christian Andersen--which means that millions saw her work, many more than most other experimental animators.....Tarantella seems Mary Ellen's best film. Using an eccentric modern composition by Edwin Gershefski, Mary Ellen herself animated most of the imagery, using jagged lines to choreograph dissonant scales.
--William Moritz

Gordon Matta-Clark

Fresh Kill (1972)





Fresh Kill revolves around the destruction of Matta-Clark's truck at the eponymous landfill, and was shown as part of Documenta 5.