Available to watch, via request, on Festival Scope Pro...

- A Florida Melancholy (2020, 95 min):
pro.festivalscope.com/film/a-florida-melancholy

- Static After Summer (2020, 117 min):

pro.festivalscope.com/film/static-after-summer

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Available to watch, for free, on Sital Cinema...

- Grass and Glass (2019, 75 min):
youtu.be/ohhC5uCfHU4

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Available to watch, for free, on Vimeo...

- A Florida Melancholy (2020, 95 min):
vimeo.com/395079209

- A Lysergic Lullaby (2020, 94 min):
vimeo.com/385375382

- Song for the Sky (2019, 88 min):
vimeo.com/368944710

- Between Scylla and Charybdis (2019, 87 min):
vimeo.com/332243443

- Image & Illusion (2018, 79 min):
vimeo.com/264388220

- Coming and Going (2018, 81 min):
vimeo.com/279507291

- The Passing of a Psychopath (2017, 80 min):
vimeo.com/221971630

- A Dream is a Life Lived and Lost (2017, 73 min):
vimeo.com/235427172

- A Subconscious Stream (2017, 65 min):
vimeo.com/204845912

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Coming soon, or TBA...

- Bleeding Solar (2020, 96 min)

- Histoire(s) du Temps (2020, 206 min)

- Reborn (2020/2021, 115 min)

- A Single Day (2020/2021, 54 min)

- The Fisherman (2020/2021, 62 min)

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Not in the Letterboxd database...

- A Single Day (2020/2021, 54 min):
*email me at elihayes93@gmail.com for a Google Drive link*

- The Fisherman (2020/2021, 62 min):
*email me at elihayes93@gmail.com for a Google Drive link*

- A Change of Seasons (2019, 68 min):
vimeo.com/312544412

- Epsilon (2019, 92 min):
youtu.be/bhbEWu3iZZs

- A Fold in Space (2018, 98 min):
vimeo.com/263098612

- Mirage (2018, 70 min):
vimeo.com/247834149

- The Gore of the Landscape (2018, 70 min):
vimeo.com/301961668

- Gravedigger's Gold (2018, 63 min):
vimeo.com/272164610

- Taking Stock (2018, 76 min):
vimeo.com/302896700

- Iridescent (2017, 79 min):
vimeo.com/209624912

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Chapters of Between Scylla and Charybdis in the Letterboxd database:

- Against the Window Pane

- Streaks of the Spirit

- Commercial

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Chapters of A Fold in Space in the Letterboxd database:

- Rorschach Rainbow

- Highway of Shadows

- War of the Ants

- Tennessee Devil Redux

- Fourfilm

- Flux

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Chapters of Mirage in the Letterboxd database:

- Road to Nowhere

- While the Water Runs Red

- Variations on a Landscape

- Concealed Colors of the Copse

- the orange hid its purple

- Study of a Slow Sky

- Hypnagogia

- to turn over in one's mind

- Inner Ear Insect

- As the Cube Hovers

- While the Water Runs White

- The Architecture of the Trees

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Chapters of Coming and Going in the Letterboxd database:

- The Retreat

- Surroundings of a Home

- A Departure

- Withdrawal

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Chapters of The Passing of a Psychopath in the Letterboxd database:

- Backtrack

- Dancing with Shadows

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Chapters of A Dream is a Life Lived and Lost in the Letterboxd database:

- Dream Number

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Chapters of A Subconscious Stream in the Letterboxd database:

- A Pair of AIs Conversing Inside the Mind of a Dog

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Bleeding Solar --

An experimental landscape film shot across three countries -- the USA, Canada & Sweden -- and collaboration with ambient musician, Arterial Red (silent apart from the composer’s 96 minute score), which explores the abstruse essence of space in the context of naturalistic environments, through four chapters and an interlude.

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Histoire(s) du Temps --

A sprawling yet compressed archival examination of various 20th century environments, conveyed through ten sections, each segment a twenty minute observation of a specific milieu within its respective decade.

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Static After Summer --

Upon returning to Nashville, Tennessee after spending the summer in northern Florida, Eli Hayes, still in the grips of depression, sunk into the isolation of his apartment and continued to close himself off from the world. Nearing a state of agoraphobia, Hayes once again turned to his camera, and the act of capturing images, as a therapeutic means of reengaging with his surroundings. Static After Summer is a slow landscape film in two parts, examining the textures of nearby environments through gradual expressions of light, color, movement, and sound.

The images presented are illustrative of the eye, while the audio presented is illustrative of the mind: somber synths, and periodic noise from the external world attempting to force its way through Hayes' emotional shell via the path of memory. The result is a dissonance between what is seen and what is felt, in an attempt to capture the inharmoniousness of the world's beauty and the pain of unhappiness.

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The Fisherman --

A slow blend of ambient landscape cinema, and stock footage from film sequences (somehow involving fishing in one way or another) — in an attempt to not only juxtapose naturalism with industrialism in the context of the environment of Milwaukee, but also combat the meditative qualities of the personally shot footage with the generally more 'violent' and abrasive essence of the pop movie/tv scenes.

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Reborn --

N/A (yet)

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A Single Day --

N/A (yet)

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A Florida Melancholy --

At the beginning of the summer of 2018, filmmaker Eli Hayes, who has been struggling with depression for his entire life, fell deep into the inky chasms of the disease. Days later, Hayes was called down to Tallahassee, Florida for a job opportunity. While in Florida, the despondency grew more severe and eventually took complete control of his psychological well-being. Over the course of the summer, good days would occur sparsely and sporadically; on these days, Hayes would bring his camera outside to film the beauty of his environment, despite knowing full well that the dejection would soon return. A Florida Melancholy is a landscape film of emotional survival, comprised of the footage that Hayes shot while in Florida throughout the darkest season of his life, during which all that he could rely on for hope & direction were his camera, and his surroundings.

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A Lysergic Lullaby --

A hallucinatory exhibition of various elements of cinema & everyday life; kaleidoscopic musings tangential to meditations in nature, as well as vibrant reveries in the periphery of cityscape ruminations.

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Song for the Sky --

The visual exploration of an individual eventually driven mad, and into their grave, by an attempt to capture the perfect image. As they moves closer and closer to their imminent demise, the sequence of visuals constituting their being begins to unravel, becoming obstructed by imagistic premonitions of the hereafter. Upon their death, buried below the base of a tree, they are hurled into an impressionistic portrait of the next world.

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Between Scylla and Charybdis --

A stream-of-consciousness scrapbook of various dreams and visions, stemming from the POV of an individual struggling with their perceptions & connection to the universe, during a difficult period of resilience and reorientation.

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Grass and Glass --

A glacial psychedelic experience exhibiting the abstract images seen by an individual slowly dying on the floor of their home.

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A Change of Seasons --

A road trip through Hokkaido, Japan, from autumn to winter.

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Epsilon --

A meditation in Malta, observationally repurposing archival material shot on a vintage Bell & Howell 8mm wind up camera.

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Image & Illusion --

The spectral perspective of an individual stuck beneath the surface of the Earth, drowning in the Styx River and attempting to make their way back to the surface, without being pulled down into the Nether.

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A Fold in Space --

As an individual takes their final breath, and begins transitioning from One space to the Next, they reflect on the landscapes, people, mundanities, artificialities, and abstractions that they encountered over the course of their fleeting existence. With footage ranging from France, to the U.S. and Canada, A Fold in Space is a contemplative, anthological feature in seven parts; The Conclusion (I), The Dreams (II), The Places (III), The Colors (IV), The Trees (V), The Humans (VI), and The Commencement (VII).

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Mirage --

A seventy minute companion piece to Hayes’ documentary feature, A Fold in Space; with footage ranging from France to Italy to the U.K. to the U.S., Mirage is an anthological, contemplative landscape feature in fifteen parts with a focus on the audiovisual experience of fusing naturalism and urbanism with the dream world.

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Coming and Going --

The story of an individual whose transient global amnesia obstructs their desire to escape into nature, exhibited via the landscapes and abstractions that they experience on their journeys and during their hallucinatory bouts of amnesia. Each time that the individual leaves their town, their home, the place from which they attempt to withdraw, they mysteriously find themselves having returned. Every attempt to depart is met with an illusory period of time and, once the illusions conclude, they're abruptly dropped back into their hometown, without having remembered their reentry.

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The Gore of the Landscape --

A deliberately underexposed, feature length contemplative film comprised entirely of archival footage, meditating on the relationship between violence, industrialization, and the American landscape.

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Gravedigger's Gold --

A feature length contemplative film comprised of the spoken word record, "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out," by Timothy Leary (dating back to 1966), as well as super 8mm archival footage from The Free Stock Footage Archive, OrangeHD & Craig Norman, and music from Max Richter [Organum (Extended)].

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Taking Stock --

A feature length contemplative film comprised entirely of archival footage, in which celluloid and digital qualities merge through a vignette examination of the people, places & practices of a bygone era.

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The Passing of a Psychopath --

A young murderer's final act of violence and subsequent death, followed by his transition into the afterlife and journey through the gates of a guilt & memory-flooded hell-scape.

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A Dream is a Life Lived and Lost --

Filmed & edited over a five year period of time, and shot across several states from the Midwest to the Northeast to the South, Hayes’ film is an contemplative documentary in the form of a dreamscape. A dreamscape from the perspective of a grief-stricken young man, who – after the unexpected death of his father – turned to his camera, music, and the road for guidance, finding solace in the act of capturing the human experience through sound and light.

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A Subconscious Stream --

A sixty-five minute companion piece to Hayes’ documentary feature, A Dream is a Life Lived and Lost, comprised of a series of loosely connected but crumbling memories & scenes from his past, and stitched into a non-narrative portrait. Five years in the making, it’s an experiential, music-centric dive into the happenings and undertakings of a young man, his travels across America, and the people & places that he chose to capture along the way.

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Iridescent --

The feature length cut of Hayes' short film, Ciliary Currents; a polychromatic spectrum of amalgamating abstractions shot in Ithaca, New York with black & white 16mm reversal film that was cut up, tinted & toned using various hues of dye, hand-spliced back together, projected onto a screen, digitally recorded, and temporally stretched.