This September, Spectacle is proud to present a retrospective of the luminary American experimental filmmaker Scott Bartlett in collaboration with The Film-Makers’ Cooperative.

Scott Barlett (1943 - 1990) was a traveling man with a fancy for strobing lights and fast motion. His films are pure psychedelia. Patching together philosophical ramblings on mystic traditions, hit songs from the ‘60s and ‘70s, and wobbly light patterns, Bartlett creates pithy works of genius. To this day, he remains best known for 1968’s OFFON, a gleaming vision of the cosmos that tested the limits of early video technology and set Bartlett down a path of stalwart experimentation within the cinematic tradition.

PROGRAM TWO: It was the ‘70s

1970. 1972. 30 min.
A TRIP TO THE MOON. 1968. 32 min.

Bartlett’s longest works are also the most emblematic of his era. The tragicomic 1970 is a city symphony unlike any other. Moving between personal documentary and city portrait, 1970 displays Bartlett’s incredible ability to shift between the world's micro and macro elements in his artistic practice. In A TRIP TO THE MOON, he films a conversation between seven artists discussing astrology and I Ching. Bartlett’s effortless control of the edit complements the artists’ metaphysical conversation, as he superimposes talking heads and cuts away to abstract images that illustrate their heady ideas.