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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Scott Barley and Mikel Guillen’s second collaboration, The Emerald Fire is inspired by the eleven Hijabaat (veils) of Sufism, feminine divinity, ascension, and the mereology of reality and experience itself.

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 A short film by Scott Barley, originally made for a "half moon phase" sequence for Tadhg O'Sullivan's essay film, 'To the Moon' (2020).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.

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 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.

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 thirty second tracking shot, moving toward, beneath, and away from a large tree at night is abstracted by slowing the original footage down to 360 minutes, rendering the movement in the shot imperceptible to the naked eye. "I wanted to undo all that is conventionally considered cinema, to reveal the tensions between still image and moving image, stasis and movement, space and temporality, the perceptible and the imperceptible." — Scott Barley

The second feature-length film directed by Scott Barley.

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.

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)

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

A Silence. Two deer. Mother and child. Curiosity and the World. Being and responding. Love and courage. A gesture. Alone in the woods inside an imperfect image. A film of three shots. A passing.

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

Hala, an Opera singer living in Rome, comes back to Cairo to claim her mother’s inheritance. This takes her on a journey across Cairo, meeting various people and many sides of the city to resolve her grief and the memories of her mother in the rough fantastical backdrop of the city.