Sleep Has Her House

Sleep Has Her House
Film poster
Directed by	Scott Barley
Written by	Scott Barley
Produced by	Scott Barley
Cinematography	Scott Barley
Edited by	Scott Barley
Music by	Scott Barley
Production company	Ether Films
Release dates	January 1st, 2017
Running time	90 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

Sleep Has Her House is a 2017 experimental film shot, written, produced, directed, and edited by British filmmaker, Scott Barley. Like several of his previous short films, Sleep Has Her House was shot on an iPhone. It also features still photography and hand drawn images by the artist.^[1]

The film is considered part of the slow cinema movement due to its use of long takes; the longest of which is 11 minutes long, featuring the sun setting until dusk. The film features no dialogue.^[2][3]

Synopsis[]

In a world seemingly devoid of human beings and inhabited by only a select few animals, an undefined presence manifests, embodied as the wind. It passes through the valley, lake, and the woods, leaving only mysterious deaths in its wake. As the night creeps in, the supernatural forces at work transcend into the natural, with apocalyptic consequences.

Production[]

Sleep Has Her House was directed by Scott Barley, who was also the film's producer, cinematographer, sound designer and editor. It was independently produced through his production company, Ether Films. Sleep Has Her House was not originally made for film festivals or the internet. The film's first draft cut had a duration of four hours, and was planned as an installation where audience members would be welcome to - in the director's own words - "take a nap" during its screening. Barley eventually decided to rework the film into a more condensed, consumable form for the internet and later for festivals, but has not ruled out releasing a longer cut in the future.^[2][4]

Principal photography was shot on an iPhone, and took place during 2015 and 2016 in Wales and Scotland, with post-production being completed alongside ongoing production for sixteen months. Some of the sequences in the film consist of up to sixty separate shots invisibly stitched together in post-production, that in some cases took months to render.^[4]

The film was completed in December 2016.

Reception[]

Critical response[]

Despite a niche audience, the film has received acclaim. In early 2017, it was nominated best "overlooked film" by film critic, Dustin Chang, in IndieWire's 2016 critic's poll, although this was before its official release.^[5] James Slaymaker of Mubi Notebook wrote, "Like the great Jean-Marie Straub, Scott Barley creates striking images by returning us to the basics of cinema, the natural world, but abstracting it through profilmic means by reducing the landscape to pure, basic forms [...] If Sleep Has Her House at first calls to mind the expressionist landscapes of Peter Hutton, Victor Sjöström, and Jean-Marie Straub, the formal apocalypse of its final act recalls the smeary digital cacophony of Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel's Leviathan. By removing his filmmaking from any traditional sense of narrative, character, and, even temporal/spatial unity, Barley invites us to see the world—and the cinematic image—anew. Sleep Has Her House is a vital reminder that the most potent visual abstractions can be created through something as simple as the shifting colour of the sky reflected in water, and the most jarring shock can come from a change in lens."^[6]

Influential American experimental filmmaker, Phil Solomon wrote of the film, "There are moments within Sleep Has Her House of such exquisite and subtle rendering of ‘moving light in place’ that I have always dreamed of experiencing in the cinema. A black forest film to be entered into only with great care and caution [...] Scott Barley has dared us to imagine a cinema of such fragile - and terrifying - beauty (reclaiming once again that real definition of 'awesome', the sublime) that places both the film and the viewer on equal footing of corporal existence by the closing credits."^[7]

The film was later nominated in Sight & Sound's best films of 2017 poll. In casting his vote, writer and film critic, Tom Charity described the film as, "The single most momentous hour and a half in the dark this year, a tenebrous landscape film shapeshifting between reality and nightmare, cinema and dream."^[8]

In early 2018, Sleep Has Her House was nominated for best film, best first feature, and best director in The Village Voice 2017 Film Poll.^[9]

In 2020, film historian, Nicole Brenez cited Sleep Has Her House as one of the best films of the decade.^[10]

Accolades[]

Sleep Has Her House was awarded Best Film by the official jury at the Fronteira International Documentary & Experimental Film Festival in Goiânia, Brazil.^[11][12]

References[]

External links[]

• IMDb page