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.

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.

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.

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.

The second feature-length film directed by Scott Barley.

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.

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.

Upon liminal spheres where dreams are woven, Adrift between stars and the trees, I pass closer to the golden dawn. There’s a warmth beyond the shadow. I feel the aurum under my eyelids, And I hope the birds will sing. Oh, I hope I will hear the birds sing... Perhaps a knowledge that never comes. for David Robert Jones (8th January 1947 - January 10th 2016)

Two separate, yet poetically connected films that act as a threnody on nature. Mikel Guillen's film is dedicated to the artist, Hiroshi Sugimoto. Scott Barley's film is dedicated to the artist, Vija Celmins.

Through a structuralist and simultaneously ambiguous form, the image's reality treads closer to the abstract, leaving the sunset and trees behind. As we enter the image's gloaming, it reveals its true eye: reality's pure haptic energy, where there is nothing but sonorous light, and the dregs of the Unknown.

A Green Ray that never features. Instead, we sense it, seeing beyond our own eyes, beyond the hills, we sense it for an instant. We are plunged into the unknowable, beyond the horizon, beyond seeing altogether. In a single, virtuoso 11 minute take, Barley takes us from lush sunsets. to beyond the green ray, and into the gloaming, into the heavy night's darkness, where we, transfixed, can do nothing but await the impending storm.

Above all, an experiment. Two identical films mirror each other. The only thing that differentiates between them is colour and sound, which is simply reversed. Through the use of just colour and sound, each part invokes unique sensations in the viewer. Not a single identifiable object features. Instead, the films focus on repetition, texture, movement and light.

Darkness has crept in. The hours pass quietly. A window ajar. A shadow observes the moonlight from the window.

The Mouth screams. It swells, hunting the night like a snake in the dark. The laceration tears through the stars, devouring its meal. In an infinite womb, limbs drift suspended, like flies in a giant spider web. An infinite sea of pale flesh. Death’s renewal awaits, as the bodies pass into the void.

A dance between moon and ocean, forests and rivers. A short film by Scott Barley, originally made for a "half moon phase" sequence for Tadhg O'Sullivan's essay film, 'To the Moon' (2020). Shot on iPhone Xs with various rephotographing techniques, combined with superimposed drawings and paintings by Scott Barley. Released as a standalone short film in 2024 as part of 'Short Films (2012–2020): Solo Works by Scott Barley' on Blu-ray.

A silent short, focusing on the beauty and melancholia of seeing horses in the cold fog, and the metaphors that manifest, as time passes.

Experimental short film by Scott Barley

An audio-visual collaboration between Italian ambient/drone musician, Easychord and UK filmmaker, Scott Barley. Guided by Easychord's haunting, bodily piece, the Scott Barley's visuals explore and invoke the concepts of prisoner's cinema, stream of consciousness, repetition, the primordial body, fundamental entities, and astral planes.

Several figures move through the darkness on a cliff-edge. An inaudible conversation near the brow of the cliff may be the cause for the group to disband. The rest of the film follows the solitary journey of the youngest member of the group, until she rests; where land meets the sea.

Through a series of chiaroscuro vignettes, the deterioration of an elderly woman's life is observed.

Waves run across the surface of the sea. A blanket of fog has descended, shrouding the far side of the water in dark mist. We hear a disturbance in the sea's surface, out of our line of sight. A man staggers into view. He is stranded. Alone. He searches for answers; in the water, in the woodland, in the hills. He finds none. As he wanders deeper into the darkness of the forest, questioning his fate and destiny, he thinks back and reminisces over fragments of his life, and what has been lost. As time passes, the man finds a cabin. He feels uplifted at the thought of shelter from exposure to the elements that he has endured. Inside the shack he encounters a book that he had lost days before. He attempts to find solace in the book's pages; memories of days passed by. It consumes him. He accepts his spiritual end. It comes full circle.

Experimental short film by Scott Barley

A silent poem to celebrate the winter light and the sense of solitude that it brings.