Dir: Simon Pummell. With: Hugo Koolschijn, Anniek Pheifer. UK/ Netherlands 2011. 86mins
Daniel Paul Schreber spent nine years in a psychiatric clinic and then in 1903 published what is still regarded as the most famous autobiography ‘written from the inside’ about schizophrenia, paranoia and megalomania. Schreber believed that he was in contact with God through the Writing-Down Machine, a precursor to the typewriter, and that only his transformation into a woman could save the world. Simon Pummell (BODYSONG) interlaces documentary, fiction and animation in an original and challenging way. Interviews with psychoanalysts, dressed in fin de siècle suits, are juxtaposed with fragments from Schreber’sprose, his typewriter floating through space like a glowing planet, and performances by the Dutch actor Hugo Koolschijn, who portrays the tormented Schreber.
Post screening panel presentation and discussion organised by Cinemas of the Mind, the Arts Forum of Psychotherapy Sussex. Simon Pummell, the director of SHOCK HEAD SOUL, Professor Ian Christie, a film historian, writer and broadcaster and Dr. Clive Robinson, a Consultant in General Adult Psychiatry will join a post screening panel discussion. This will be chaired by Helen Taylor Robinson, who conceived and developed the idea of SHOCK HEAD SOUL with Simon Pummell. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Psychoanalysis and has lectured and published on Film and Psychoanalysis. The members of the panel have all been closely involved in the making of the film.
Combined film and panel discussion ticket £10.00/£8.00 Duke of York’s members and concessions.
