Photography by Rachel Manns

Skip the test, drop the mask, reclaim the space.

This hugely innovative and creative film focuses on the neurodivergent experience and has its feet firmly planted in Hastings. Gareth Stevens explains why he thinks it is not so much about autism, it is of autism.

This is cinema that doesn’t depict or describe the world of the neurodivergent, it compels us to enter it and almost experience it in person. Don’t expect a didactic analysis of an unknown territory, expect to be carefully led by a warm and welcoming hand into a world that turns out to be not as unfamiliar as you may have thought.

There is a tenderness and warmth in Robin and his father’s conversation that is both disarming and touching. Robin Elliott-Knowles and John Knowles were both closely involved in the film’s production. You may have been to one of Robin’s ‘B-movie’ screenings at the Electric Palace? If not you will get some insight in the opening scene. Robin is obsessed with cheaply made, usually horror films produced outside of the Hollywood mainstream. ‘Zombie Nun Trilogy’ is an example I overheard them discussing. We meet at their St Leonards home and I hear more about the film over a cup of herbal tea. Much of what is written here is based on their contribution and I would like to thank them for their time.

Before seeing the film, I didn’t know what stimming was. It turns out it is shorthand for ‘self-stimulation’, a natural and often repetitive action that can help us cope with challenging situations and environments.

Very much a non-hierarchical group project, the film was created by the Neurocultures Collective (Georgia Bradburn, Benjamin Brown, Sam Chown Ahern, Robin Elliot-Knowles, Lucy Walker) alongside the award winning director Steven Eastwood. Driven by the central mantra of “Nothing about us without us”, the film is an object lesson in deep non-ego led collaboration. At the same time as sensitively telling each individual protagonist’s story, the film seamlessly weaves them together to celebrate the overlaps, differences and a set of central themes that are discussed below.

By any measure ‘The Stimming Pool’ is an astonishing slice of cinema. Despite being exquisitely crafted and supremely cohesive, it successfully blurs the boundaries of usually discrete film genres. One minute it tips its hat to magic realism and the next it depicts candidly shot production meetings in which we gain access to the team’s creative process. At another point we are presented with a piece of parodied schlock horror animation. This composite jigsaw of approaches, and the delicate way they are woven together, is pure evidence of top notch and innovative film making. No wonder it has already done the rounds and won acclaim at many international film festivals … the next being at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in March.

About the scenes showing the creative team’s meeting; they not only constitute a delicious meta-narrative, they promote an inclusive transparency that infuses the whole film.

So why are we featuring ‘The Stimming Pool’ in our humble magazine? Well there are many scenes filmed in recognisable locations in Hastings and St Leonards and some of the cast and collective members live here. Furthermore the piece was produced by Chloe White of Whalebone Films, a production company based in our town.

Skipping the test

One prominent cast member is the artist Sam Chown Ahern. Their contribution focuses on

the process of diagnosis and the way that medical interventions quantify, label and reduce experience down to data. There are scenes of Sam undergoing inane and vague questionnaires. Others chillingly show white coated professionals measuring her, and others’ heads and faces with calipers. Sam can be seen viewing clips of films whilst the way their eyes scan the screen is being monitored. The film doesn’t present a vehement indictment of the medical profession and its diagnostic method; rather it invites us to empathise with those of us that are poked, prodded and measured and made to feel different.

Dropping the mask

Dre AKA the Shapeshifter is at work in an orthodox and anodyne office. They are surveilled by what seems like CCTV as they awkwardly attempt to navigate their conventional work environment. At one point, rather than interact with two colleagues who are conversing in the narrow lane between two rows of computers, they opt for a much longer route to where they need to go. Following the palpable sense of relief conveyed by being able to leave the workplace at the end of the day, we witness what, for me, is one of the most poignant segments of the film. Dre arrives home and after opening the door their head pops into view and Dre asks inquisitively “Hello?” to their empty flat. Reassured by being alone and being able to find respite, Dre immediately drops to the floor and begins, despite there not being any ‘audience’, an almost histrionic series of movements that are like some anarchic form of yoga spliced with contemporary dance.

It is a taut celebration of not needing to conform. We feel a sense of both liberation and anxiety. This is the most explicit example of a cast member dropping the mask and it is incredibly emotive. 

For me one of the most moving effects of the film is the way that it consoles the viewer. I felt comforted by it. I was reassured that my suspicion that the majority of social situations are deeply performative in nature and that they are bound by unwritten rules and rituals, is well founded and that any guilt I feel around this (adopting a mask as it were) is unjustified. It pushed me to consider how such conventions can normalise one’s interactions, downplay the need for self care and even override our need to feel deeply connected or validated. Neurotypicality, it seems, is almost always a fragile role we mostly chose to play.

Reclaiming the space

Lucy Walker is shown visiting a crowded pub (the St Leonard). Full of happy revellers, atypically there is a game of table tennis going on. This echoes the eye tracking graphics shown elsewhere in the film. Unable to find any breathing space, she navigates the space anxiously and finds no comfort, even in the toilet. Returning after hours when the pub is empty she reclaims the space in the guise of the spirit-dog Chess. In full costume she looks over the space and finally finds peace. Cleverly Chess, the dog that looks over people with disabilities, crops up several times in the film. As a real dog, as a super-sensed hero in a childrens’ book and as a human in costume. Layer-on-layer this is another way in which this film excites, provokes and engages.

Essentially The Stimming Pool itself is about finding somewhere that can be reclaimed by neurodivergent people. The disused swimming pool becomes a place that is safe and free from normalised means of expression. When Sam ducks under the barrier that says ‘No Entry’, it is a pivotal moment in the film. The complete cast come together for a finale that is strangely quiet and majestic not least because of inspired cinematography and camerawork. In this scene the camera itself stims. It sweeps in circles in such a way that we ourselves as viewers become stimmers.

The whole team agreed that the camera is one of the cast and that as such should be autistic. The Autistic Camera crucially poses the question “Does cinema revolve around normative neurology?” It “discovers a relay of subjects who stray through the world, revealing environments often hostile to autistic experience—such as a hectic workplace and a crowded pub and quiet spaces that offer respite from them.”

In a sense through ‘The Stimming Pool’, the autistic camera has reclaimed a space in the world of cinema itself. Having watched ‘The Stimming Pool’ twice I am convinced that everyone should see it. There are few films that change lives, but this one changed mine.

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‘The Stimming Pool’ will be premiered at the Electric Palace cinema on Saturday 29th March and can also be seen at selected cinemas from 28th March.