The Stimulating Pool is unlike anything else you may have seen on the film festival circuit this year. Described as “a hybrid film that presents the possibilities of a world informed by autistic perspectives and perceptions,” the experimental film from a group of British filmmakers presents a “drifting form built around the concept of an autistic camera.”
As a synopsis explains: “This camera's curiosity uncovers an array of subjects wandering the world, revealing environments often hostile to the autistic experience, such as a busy workplace and a crowded pub, and quiet spaces that offer respite from them ”.
Characters we meet along the way include the host of a B-movie movie club, a young woman who fills out questionnaires and watches footage in an eye-tracking test, an office worker who goes through life masking his autistic nature, and an enigmatic dog . -the human spirit that watches over people with disabilities whose story is told in an illustrated book.
“Like a Russian doll Where's Wally?? (OR Where's Waldo? in the United States), the film invites the audience to take pleasure in exploring the details in every part of the frame,” notes the synopsis. “Each of the characters exists in a separate world… But gradually we come to realize that they have common experiences Some hide their autism and deal with the resulting sense of isolation, while others thrive in the communities and support the structures that surround them. All, however, have a common goal: to find a place where they can be free to move and stimulate themselves, uninhibited by tests e
restrictions of normative society. This secret place is the Stimming Pool…”.
“Stimulatory” or self-stimulating behaviors are repetitive actions or movements that people use to regulate their emotions or cope with feelings.
The film features a cast of autistic actors and non-actors, including neurodivergent artist Dre Spisto. Members of the Neuroculture Collective also appear, mostly behind the scenes discussing creative decisions. The Stimulating Pool was shot in Super 16mm by After sun director of photography Greg Oke.
The film had its world premiere at CPH:DOX 2024 in Copenhagen and was recently screened at the BFI London Film Festival. And just the other week, it became one of 13 feature films on the shortlist for this year's Raindance Maverick Award at the British Independent Film Awards, or BIFA. The award is reserved for “creative, money-conscious and risk-taking directors.”
British production and distribution company Dartmouth Films is planning a theatrical release for spring 2025.
The co-creators behind it The Stimulating Pool are the Neurocultures Collective, composed of Sam Chown-Ahern, Georgia Bradburn, Benjamin Brown, Robin Elliott-Knowles and Lucy Walker, who collaborated on the project with artist-filmmaker Steven Eastwood, who served as co-director and co- producer, as well as producer Chloe White of Whalebone Films.
The project began with a grant from the charity Wellcome Trust for Autism Through Cinema, a research project at Queen Mary University of London which examined “how cinema has created descriptions of autism and influenced our understanding of neurodiversity”. The research project was structured around two main activities: film archaeology, led by Professor Janet Harbord, and film practice, led by director and professor of film practice Eastwood. As part of the grant, Eastwood held a series of workshops that served as the building blocks for the collective that formed in late 2020. They then collaborated on the hybrid feature film The Stimulating Poolas well as a multi-screen gallery installation called “Stim Cinema.”
Despite the London Film Festival's busy schedule and large crowds, several members of the Collective and Eastwood had time to meet THR in a rather quiet corner of London's Southbank Center to discuss the film and their creative experience.
Their main goal was to create something that felt different and that they liked without feeling the need to educate viewers.
“I guess we're not necessarily teaching the public about autism,” Chown-Ahern shared THR. “We are all autistic and we all have different experiences of being autistic, but also different experiences of working and enjoying cinema. So, this movie doesn't say 'here's what it's like to be autistic,' but we just made a movie and some aspects of autism are there simply because that's how it is for us every day.”
The creative concluded: “So to the audience, the best way I can say is, 'don't have any expectations for what you're going to see, because it's quite a different film.' And it's a film that pushes barriers and boundaries, probably because it doesn't present a linear narrative. But it also doesn't represent what we normally see or perceive as films.”
Bradburn echoed this sentiment. “I hope people can walk away with the idea that there is the possibility of different ways of making films and different narratives,” he said THR. “I think especially documentaries historically are quite rigid. The film was in the Create section of the London Film Festival, and I think that really speaks to the fact that the film is about the creative process. It's about creating and collaborating.”
He concluded: “I hope people can understand that their creative process doesn't have to be one specific way. It doesn't have to be neurotypical. He doesn't have to conform to this way or this language. There are several possibilities.”
Eastwood recalled a moment during the film's creative process that says a lot about it. “We had an assembled cut that wasn't blocked, but we had a pretty good shape for the film,” he said THR. “We did a screening test and some people who don't identify as neurodivergent or autistic said, 'You need more signage.' What about the explanatory text on the screen? You can't ask the audience to trust that much in terms of flow and scheme.' And it was so amazing that everyone in the Collective just said, “No, let's stick to our beliefs.” It's not about holding hands, and being curious, and drifting a certain sense, to swing.”
He added it The Stimulating Pool it's not about solving a puzzle. “That's the thing that a lot of movies do,” Eastwood pointed out. “They hide information, make you curious and then explain everything at the end.”
When this writer shared that he enjoyed the points in the film where he struggled to make sense of certain things and that he even went back to rewatch a scene the following day, Chown-Ahern smiled. “It's definitely a film that I think should be seen more than once, just because there's so much stuff in it, but it's also that beautiful discovery that you have during the film when you look at different things and notice things that you might not have noticed at the first shift,” he said. “So the fact that you went back and re-watched this scene makes me really happy because this is what we want in a way. We want people to come back, we want people to want to come back to revisit it, whether out of pure curiosity or intrigue.
Without spoiling the ending, the film ends with a particularly memorable scene. The creative team shared that throughout the development process, they had various conversations about how to best wrap up the film. The Collective and Eastwood agreed that they didn't want a downer ending but something that many of the creatives described as “a celebration” and “a release.” Bradburn calls it “a satisfying and natural ending point.”
The Stimulating Pool is a reference to an abandoned swimming pool that plays a key role in the film. But where did the idea come from? This is where the other two members of the Collective who were not present at the meeting met THR enter. Walker invented a character described as a dog spirit animal. The Collective wanted all the characters to eventually reunite in one place. Walker, meanwhile, was interested in testing the concept of people and is also interested in abandoned spaces. “He talked about renaturalizing civic spaces with autistic-like gestures and behaviors,” Eastwood said THR. “So he came up with the idea of shooting in an empty pool, and then he had the concept of a challenging pool, and then that became one of the signature events.”
Another memorable part of the film is a gory zombie animation sequence courtesy of Elliott-Knowles. “I wanted to show something of my love for the horror and science fiction genres, and I thought: why not?” the creative tells THR when asked how he came up with the idea. “So I made a storyboard. I'm making alternate history comic style storyboards at home. It's all the historical events in the world where women can become warriors and no one judges based on sex or gender. But they continue to judge based on race and religion. So I decided to make a little storyboard of the American Civil War with a female Yankee soldier [fighting] Confederate Zombies in the Louisiana Swamplands.”
Could the film and the world at large see more from the Collective in the future? “I don't want to impress anyone. There are conversations to be had,” Bradburn offered. “I think all of us throughout the process saw things and [also do] create other things outside of the film and we want to work more. Sam and I just finished working on another film project, so there's a good collaboration between us.
He added: “Lucy had a different character that didn't make it into the film that I had worked closely with her on. I think Lucy and I in particular have a connection in that sense, and Robin too, with this alternate history project which is really beautiful and amazing. So, we all talked about wanting to be really involved in all these projects together.
Eastwood is proud of it The Stimulating Pool presents a different approach to cinema. “People think movies are just about character arcs and story structures,” he said THR. “This film really says: What about films that bob and bob and drift and are about patterns and the joy of things repeating? I think everyone feels this joy, and the audience doesn't necessarily have to be a spoon-fed structure.”
Before the meeting ended, he had one more thing to point out. “The way the film was made, which is as special to us as the film itself, was to have completely accessible and inclusive footage,” Eastwood emphasized. “We had quiet spaces, we had counselors, we had supporters, we had an almost entirely autistic cast and a high percentage of the crew also identified as neurodivergent. We had disabled cyclists, so people could specify their needs. It's something we're really proud of. And it is co-owned. We all got approval for the change. It's truly a co-created project, and it's something we're really eager to share.”