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Draft:Hinterlands (2016 film)

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Hinterlands
Directed byScott Barley
Written byScott Barley
Produced byScott Barley
CinematographyScott Barley
Edited byScott Barley
Music byScott Barley
Production
company
Ether Films
Release date
2016
Running time
7 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish (text)

Hinterlands is a 2016 experimental short horror film, produced, directed, shot, and edited by British filmmaker, Scott Barley.

The film was shot on an iPhone 6 and includes drawings and paintings by the artist.[1][2][3][4][5] The film has been described as "a space between cinema and the uncanny."[6]

Form and style

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The film uses abstraction and surrealism, and follows a structuralist form that can be separated into three segments.[3][7]

The first section features a repeating montage series, consisting of slow tracking shots, gazing up from beneath trees silhouetted against a green and red-hued sunset. The tracking shots are accompanied by low-frequency sound and intercut with periods of black. The montage sequence repeats three times. With each repetition, the sequence’s final shot is extended, revealing more of the space. The disembodied camera continues to travel further towards an obscured vanishing point, passing deeper beneath the silhouetted trees and sunset.

At the end of the third repetition, a second section begins which breaks the repetition, employing camera shake, defocus aberration, an acceleration of camera movement, and an abrasive, percussive sound mix.

The film ends with a series of abstract, red-hued images. There is an implication that these scenes are occurring in a higher dimension of reality.[8][9][10][11]

“The unpredictable temporalities (featuring jumps, slips and pauses) and impossible visuals created from the layering of images recall worlds that feel alien rather than terrestrial. The act of perceiving becomes an unfamiliar one, and we lose the footholds of that which grounds us in our world - our senses. Though we can occasionally see an image of something we recognise in Hinterlands, the treachery of Barley’s images creates a processual doubt in our thinking and before we know it, what we thought we had recognised is replaced by something altogether different.” [12] The Affective Database: Symulation and Enacting Worldhood in the Film-worlds of Scott Barley, Jack Buchanan, Networking Knowledge.

Matt Turner, writing for Sight & Sound described the film as “a single pressurised short that explodes with an intensity that foreshadows the feature (Sleep Has Her House) that would follow [...] Before long, the sequence begins to fracture, a shuddering baseline accompanying the juddering frame, before erupting entirely into frenzy. The image strobes whilst the camera spirals, red lines blurring into haptic disarray.”[10]

Release

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Home media

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Hinterlands was first released on 2nd October, 2016 on the video hosting platform Vimeo.[13] The film was released on Blu-ray with Sleep Has Her House and Womb in 2021. A second edition of the Blu-ray was released in April 2023.[14]

Critical reception

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Film historian, Nicole Brenez nominated Hinterlands as one of the five best films of the year in Sight & Sound's best films of 2016 poll.[15]

See Also

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References

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  1. ^ "Hinterlands — Scott Barley". scottbarley.com. Retrieved 2022-10-28.
  2. ^ Wiedemann, Sebastian. "NoctilucaScreen Project: Incertezas (2016)". ClimaCom.
  3. ^ a b Schleser, Max (2021-08-26). Smartphone Filmmaking: Theory and Practice. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. ISBN 978-1-5013-6034-3.
  4. ^ Barley, Scott (2021-12-30). "Instagram post".
  5. ^ Schleser, Max (2021-08-26). Smartphone Filmmaking: Theory and Practice. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. ISBN 978-1-5013-6034-3.
  6. ^ Schleser, Max (2021-08-26). Smartphone Filmmaking: Theory and Practice. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. ISBN 978-1-5013-6035-0.
  7. ^ Barley, Scott (2016-10-02), Hinterlands, retrieved 2024-01-08
  8. ^ Hinterlands by Scott Barley, retrieved 2022-10-28
  9. ^ Buchanan, Jack (2021-10-31). "The Affective Database: 'Symulation' and Enacting Worldhood in the Film-worlds of Scott Barley". Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network. 14 (2): 147–159. doi:10.31165/nk.2021.142.645. ISSN 1755-9944. S2CID 243474156.
  10. ^ a b "Scott Barley's eternal gloaming | Sight & Sound". British Film Institute. 31 July 2018. Retrieved 2022-10-28.
  11. ^ Baldassari, Lorenzo (2017-02-13). "Sleep Has Her House (Scott Barley, 2017) - Recensione". Lo Specchio Scuro (in Italian). Retrieved 2024-01-08.
  12. ^ Buchanan, Jack (2021-10-31). "The Affective Database: 'Symulation' and Enacting Worldhood in the Film-worlds of Scott Barley". Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network. 14 (2): 147–159. doi:10.31165/nk.2021.142.645. ISSN 1755-9944.
  13. ^ Barley, Scott (2016-10-02), Hinterlands, retrieved 2023-07-22
  14. ^ "store — Scott Barley". 2023-04-01. Archived from the original on 2023-04-01. Retrieved 2023-07-22.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  15. ^ "The best films of 2016 | Sight & Sound". British Film Institute. 12 April 2017. Retrieved 2022-10-28.


Category:2010s avant-garde and experimental films Category:2016 films Category:2016 horror films Category:British avant-garde and experimental films Category:Slow movement Category:Mobile phone films Category:2010s English-language films Category:2010s British films

Category:Drafts about horror films