April is Autism Acceptance Month and Peckhamplex has a special Sunday screening of The Stimming Pool, made by The Neurocultures Collective.
What It Feels Like To Be Neurodivergent
by Alexa DalbyThe Stimming Pool
3.0 out of 5.0 stars
CAUTION: Here be spoilers
The Stimming Pool is a timely, unclassifiable, challenging documentary made by a group of arts practitioners on the autistic spectrum – The Neurocultures Collective.
It gives an unusual insight into what it means to be neurodivergent and the special edge it gives to creativity. Stimming is short for self-stimulation, usually a repetitive action used by autistic people, when the sensory overload of everyday life, which they are unable to selectively block out, gets unbearable for them.
Among others, The Stimming Pool follows the speech made by its founder at the Bad Film Club, a video tracking test by a doctor to see how the eye moves over crowd scenes and the making of an illustrated book about Chess, the border collie, who has special powers. It slips into the animation sketched out at the beginning.
The total effect is to make clearer how autistic people can view the world and how they ‘mask’ themselves to conform to other people’s world – until they find a way to release. Maybe by stimming in an empty swimming pool
The producer is Steven Eastwood, who pushed the boundaries of palliative care with his previous film Island.
The Stimming Pool premiered at the BFI London Film Festival and is released on 28 March 2025.
