Skip the test, drop the mask, reclaim the space… An experimental, at times fantastical hybrid feature film co-created by a collective of five different neurodivergent artists, the Neurocultures Collective (Sam Chown-Ahern, Georgia Bradburn, Benjamin Brown, Robin Elliott-Knowles, Lucy Walker), and filmmaker Steven Eastwood, The Stimming Pool is an alternative and artistic take on what it’s like to live with neurodivergence in a chaotic world often hostile to those who are different.
The film’s drifting form is built around the concept of an autistic camera with a series of subjects, including a B-Movie film club host, a young woman taking part in a diagnostic test, an office worker masking their autistic nature, and an enigmatic dog spirit. Shot on crisp, beautiful 16mm film by Aftersun cinematographer Gregory Oke, these different stories weave imaginatively, even magically in and out of each other, entering the illuminating possibilities of a world informed by neurodiverse vision.