'Shock Head Soul' premieres at London Film Festival
17 October 2011
‘Shock Head Soul’ uses documentary, drama and animation to piece together the story of Daniel Paul Schreber, a successful German judge who famously recorded his decline into mental illness in an autobiography. Published in 1903, 'Memoirs of My Nervous Illness' remains one of the most remarkable studies of madness 'from the inside' ever written.
Schreber was already well into middle age when he started to receive messages from God, via a 'Writing Down Machine'. He spent the next nine years confined to an institution suffering delusions of cosmic control, and believing that the only way to save the world was for him to submit to God's plan to change him into a woman.
Conceived as part of a transmedia project by artist and director Simon Pummell, from a concept he developed with psychoanalyst Helen Taylor Robinson, 'Shock Head Soul' combines beautiful images and formal precision with fascinating insights from psychiatrists, analysts and social commentators past and present. Shreber's case and his struggle to free himself from institutional care make for compelling viewing, revealing a fascinating mix of family secrets, psychotic visions, and questions of religious freedom and technological advancement that are still relevant today.
'Shock Head Soul' was part-funded by a Large Arts Award from the Wellcome Trust.
Shock Head Soul
London Film Festival, BFI Southbank, Belvedere Road, London SE1
Thursday 20 October, 18.30, tickets £13
Friday 21 October, 15.45, tickets £7/£6
Book online.
Image: Hugo Koolschijn playing Daniel Paul Schreber in 'Shock Head Soul'.