Scott Barley (born 11 November 1992) is a Welsh filmmaker, artist,

drone music Drone music, drone-based music, or simply drone, is a minimalist genre of music that emphasizes the use of sustained sounds, notes, or tone clusters called '' drones''. It is typically characterized by lengthy compositions featuring relativel ...

ian, and writer. His work often focuses on creating mood and sensory experiences rather than following traditional narrative structures. His films have been associated with the remodernist and

slow cinema Slow cinema is a genre of art cinema characterised by a style that is minimalist, observational, and with little or no narrative, and which typically emphasizes long takes.Steven RoseTwo Years At Sea: little happens, nothing is explained ''The Guar ...

movements, and

ecocriticism Ecocriticism is the study of literature and ecology from an interdisciplinary point of view, where literature scholars analyze texts that illustrate environmental concerns and examine the various ways literature treats the subject of nature. It wa ...

. Recurrent themes in his work are the

anthropocene ''Anthropocene'' is a term that has been used to refer to the period of time during which human impact on the environment, humanity has become a planetary force of change. It appears in scientific and social discourse, especially with respect to ...

nature Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the Ecosphere (planetary), ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the Scientific law, laws, elements and phenomenon, phenomena of the physic ...

darkness Darkness is the condition resulting from a lack of illumination, or an absence of visible light. Human vision is unable to distinguish colors in conditions of very low luminance because the hue-sensitive photoreceptor cells on the retina a ...

, absence,

cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe, the cosmos. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', with the meaning of "a speaking of the wo ...

phenomenology Phenomenology may refer to: Art * Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties Philosophy * Phenomenology (Peirce), a branch of philosophy according to Charles Sanders Peirce (1839� ...

mereology Mereology (; from Greek μέρος 'part' (root: μερε-, ''mere-'') and the suffix ''-logy'', 'study, discussion, science') is the philosophical study of part-whole relationships, also called ''parthood relationships''. As a branch of metaphys ...

and

mysticism Mysticism is popularly known as becoming one with God or the Absolute (philosophy), Absolute, but may refer to any kind of Religious ecstasy, ecstasy or altered state of consciousness which is given a religious or Spirituality, spiritual meani ...

. His filmmaking methods have been compared to

David Lynch David Keith Lynch (January 20, 1946 – January 16, 2025) was an American filmmaker, visual artist, musician, and actor. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Lynch was often called a "visionary" and received acclaim f ...

Stan Brakhage James Stanley Brakhage ( ; January 14, 1933 – March 9, 2003) was an American experimental filmmaker. He is considered to be one of the most important figures in 20th-century experimental film. Over the course of five decades, Brakhage cr ...

, Philippe Grandrieux,

Béla Tarr Béla Tarr (born 21 July 1955) is a Hungarian filmmaker. Debuting with the film '' Family Nest'' (1979), Tarr began his directorial career with a brief period of what he refers to as "social cinema", aimed at telling everyday stories about ordi ...

Alexander Sokurov Alexander Nikolayevich Sokurov, PAR (; born 14 June 1951) is a Russian filmmaker. His most significant works include a feature film, ''Russian Ark'' (2002), filmed in a single unedited shot, and ''Faust'' (2011), which was honoured with the G ...

, Maya Deren and Jean Epstein. Since early 2015, Barley has almost exclusively shot his films on

iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...

. He is most well-known for the 2017 experimental film, '' Sleep Has Her House''. Danish film critic, and former director of the European Documentary Network, Tue Steen Müller has described him as the "

Anselm Kiefer Anselm Kiefer (born 8 March 1945) is a German painter and sculptor. He studied with Peter Dreher and Horst Antes at the end of the 1960s. His works incorporate materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac. The poems of Paul Celan h ...

of cinema".

Influences and style

Barley has cited

Robert Bresson Robert Bresson (; 25 September 1901 – 18 December 1999) was a French film director. Known for his ascetic approach, Bresson made a notable contribution to the art of cinema; his non-professional actors, Ellipsis (narrative device), ellipses, an ...

Michelangelo Antonioni Michelangelo Antonioni ( ; ; 29 September 1912 – 30 July 2007) was an Italian film director, screenwriter, and editor. He is best known for his "trilogy on modernity and its discontents", ''L'Avventura'' (1960), ''La Notte'' (1961), and '' ...

, Pedro Costa, Phil Solomon, Jean-Claude Rousseau, and Nathaniel Dorsky among his favourite filmmakers. Barley's imagery and focus on natural landscape has been likened to the romantic tradition of The Sublime within a

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

and

digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Businesses *Digital bank, a form of financial institution *Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) or Digital, a computer company *Digital Research (DR or DRI), a software ...

context. Critics and academics have drawn parallels with '' Sleep Has Her House'' and the work of

Caspar David Friedrich Caspar David Friedrich (; 5 September 1774 – 7 May 1840) was a German Romanticism, German Romantic Landscape painting, landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation, whose often symbolic, and anti ...

, J. M. W. Turner,

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...

, Wagner's ''

Götterdämmerung ' (; ''Twilight of the Gods''), Wagner-Werk-Verzeichnis, WWV 86D, is the last of the four epic poetry, epic music dramas that constitute Richard Wagner's Literary cycle, cycle ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (English: ''The Ring of the Nibelung''). I ...

'' and the ideas of

Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (born Emanuel Kant; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German Philosophy, philosopher and one of the central Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works ...

, among others. Barley's approach to filmmaking is similar to that of other solo and poetic avant-garde filmmakers,

, Jonas Mekas, Nathaniel Dorsky and Peter Hutton, but the

post-production Post-production, also known simply as post, is part of the process of filmmaking, video production, audio production, and photography. Post-production includes all stages of production occurring after principal photography or recording indivi ...

process is unique to both mainstream and avant-garde filmmaking practices.

"I always begin a film almost like one would keep a diary. I have no idea, or agenda to make a film. I simply document. I shoot what attracts me, random things, animals, variances in light, the water, the stars; simply what draws me in on different days, different nights, in different places. Once I have built up a body of footage, I start to see connections. These pieces of footage could be taken months or even years apart – and miles apart too. then invisibly stitch he different shotstogether into one larger shot or sequence. But these connections between different pieces of footage all happen organically. I never force these connections. I never force a film when it doesn’t come. The films find me – not the other way round ..All my films have been made this way. Some happen quicker than others. Once these connections are established, a narrative - through images - begins to germinate."

Filmography

Music

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Barley, Scott Living people British experimental filmmakers 1992 births