Intended to be witnessed in complete darkness, Spectacle is pleased to dim the lights extra low for a sampling of recently remastered works from acclaimed slow cinema practitioner Scott Barley, whose immersive and dread-inducing nocturnal landscape films have found international recognition despite relative underappreciation in New York City. Throughout August, Barley’s seminal shot-on-iPhone feature debut SLEEP HAS HER HOUSE will be preceded by two other dense doses of ecological and cosmic terror: HINTERLANDS and WOMB.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3 – 5PM with Scott Barley for remote Q+A!
(This event is $10.)
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 – MIDNIGHT
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29 – 10 PM

GET YOUR TICKETS!

SLEEP HAS HER HOUSE
dir. Scott Barley, 2017; 2021 remaster
United Kingdom. 90 mins.

Structured as if it were the final inhale and exhale of Mother Nature from her deathbed, the carefully assembled long takes and immersive soundscapes that make up Barley’s masterful debut feature transmute shadow-blanketed trees, waterfalls and sparse signs of wildlife into haunting alien figures. With one last breath, a decaying post-human world collapses into eternal abstraction. Shot on iPhone 6 Plus.

screening with

HINTERLANDS
2016; 2019 remaster. United Kingdom.
7 mins.

Something seems to be coming from the sky, but we are pulled into its grasp before we can comprehend what awaits. Initially inspired by a repetitive nightmare and the first-person viewpoint of Hideo Kojima and Guillermo Del Toro’s canceled video game project SILENT HILLS, Barley ended up repurposing 5 minutes of footage shot from a car passenger seat to create this descent into blunt-forced formalist horror.

WOMB
2017; 2019 remaster. United Kingdom.
17 mins.

Though some of Barley’s earlier films feature human beings on camera, WOMB marks a decisive development in his aesthetic treatment of darkness, death and rebirth. Within a pitch-dark maw that opens between the stars, writhing bodies suspended in the void become as immense and uncanny as any of Barley’s wilderness tableaus.

SCOTT BARLEY is an artist-filmmaker, drone musician, writer and lecturer working between Scotland and Wales whose films (much of which are generously accessible through his website) have been exhibited over the last decade at venues such as BFI Southbank, Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Venice Biennale and Telluride Film Festival. In 2018, Barley co-founded the filmmaking collective Obscuritads, and in 2021, EYE Filmmuseum permanently inducted SLEEP HAS HER HOUSE into its archive. Since 2017, Barley has been making his ambitious second feature film, THE SEA BEHIND HER HEAD, with support from the BFI and DocSociety, along with two new shorts titled THE FLESH and WITHIN WITHOUT HORIZON.

Total runtime: 114 min. These films contain intense strobing sequences that may not be safe for those sensitive to light.