Scott Barley

In the heart of a botanical garden in a medieval university town in Germany stands a majestic ginkgo tree. This silent witness has observed over a century the quiet rhythms of transformation across three human lives. At three distinct moments across the 20th and 21st centuries, these people — each carrying their own questions and inner struggles — inevitably find themselves drawn into the presence of this tree, full of mystery and meaning.

Martha (45), a mother who lost track of her son due to the conflict, receives the news that there was no bone concordance in the last exhumation she participated in. Exhausted of the institutional channels, she turns to a group of women searchers and meets Sandra, who tells her a rumor: “in a remote village on the flatlands of Colombia, you can request a favour from a dead person”. Together with Sandra, they embark on a journey in search of answers, blurring the line between the living and the dead. Mothers searching for their children, children searching for their mothers: two sides of the same scourge converge in search of peace.

Experimental short film by Scott Barley

The shadows of screams climb beyond the hills. It has happened before. But this will be the last time. The last few sense it, withdrawing deep into the forest. They cry out into the black, as the shadows pass away, into the ground.

A commissioned music video for Emmit Fenn’s instrumental track, Wind.

This is a beautiful and poetic cinematic ode to our moon. Made primarily from international cinematic archives in combination with literary fragments and original moonlit cinematography filmed across five continents, To the Moon steps lightly through the ages and ideas that people have drawn from the moon to create a meditative work.

Based on the short ghost story of the same name by Algernon Blackwood from 1909, The Occupant of the Room centers on a schoolteacher whose late-night arrival at a hotel in the Alps leads to a sleepless night full of uncanny occurrences.

Secret ladder. Borne from firmament. Stone, atonal waters. Chorus of silent hands. A vanishing act. Night is burning. Night is burning white. Flesh, a white fire. Avian. Given. Secret ladder. Mirror, become mirror.