TICKETS $15

Doors 6:30 p.m.; Event 7 p.m.
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THE EXPERIENCE

The Stimming Pool is an experimental—at times fantastical—hybrid feature film, co-created by a collective of autistic artists, the Neurocultures Collective, and filmmaker Steven Eastwood, who invite you into a neurodiverse world within the undulating logic of neurotypical environments. After the screening a discussion on filmmaking and autism will take place with director Bret Malley and experimental filmmaker and professor Julie Perini. In addition to the screening on Friday July 24th, co-director Georgia Bradburn will lead an online workshop titled The Autistic Camera from Noon PST – 1:30pm PST.

ON SCREEN: The Stimming Pool

2024. Directed by Sam Chown-Ahern, Georgia Bradburn, Benjamin Brown, Robin Elliott-Knowles, Lucy Walker, and Steven Eastwood. Runtime: 1 hour 7 minutes. 

A B-Movie film club host introduces a lost animated horror movie; a young woman fills out questionnaires and watches sequences in an eye-tracking test; an office worker goes about their life, masking their autistic nature; a picture book tells the story of an enigmatic dog-human spirit watching over people with disabilities.

Co-created by the Neurocultures Collective (Sam Chown-Ahern, Georgia Bradburn, Benjamin Brown, Robin Elliott-Knowles, Lucy Walker) and artist-filmmaker Steven Eastwood, The Stimming Pool is an experimental and sometimes magical hybrid film whose drifting form is built around the concept of an autistic camera. The curiosity of this camera discovers a relay of subjects who stray through the world, revealing environments often hostile to autistic experience – such as a hectic workplace and a crowded pub – and quiet spaces that offer respite from them. Sometimes the camera wanders off without any guide, finding an ancient woodland, an abandoned testing centre, even a fragment from an animated zombie film set in the American civil war…

Like a Russian doll of Where’s Wally scenes, the film invites the audience to take pleasure in exploring details in every part of the frame. Each of the characters exists in a separate world nested inside one other and often jumping up and down levels. But gradually we come to realise they have common experiences. Some are concealing their autism and dealing with the resulting feelings of isolation, while others thrive in the communities and support structures around them. All, however, have a shared objective: to find a place where they are free to move and stim, uninhibited by the tests and restrictions of normative society. This secret place is the Stimming Pool…

ON STAGE: 

Bret Malley (Director, The Divergent Gift: Unboxing Autism) – Bret Malley is an award-winning filmmaker, author, and educator whose work explores the intersection of creativity and neurodivergence. With an MFA from Syracuse and books published by Adobe Press, he brings decades of visual storytelling expertise to The Divergent Gift. What started as a journey to understand his son’s diagnosis became a realization of his own neurodivergence. This dual perspective fuels his passion to lift stigma and reshape the narrative from deficit-only to one of depth, difference, compassion, and deeper empathy. Bret lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife, son, and a dog that is convinced it is a cat, and a cat that thinks itself a dog. The other cat just likes to eat.

Julie Perini (Filmmaker, Professor) – Julie Perini is an experimental and documentary filmmaker, visual and conceptual artist, and writer. She is an artistic descendent of time-bending mentors like Tony Conrad and the Buffalo Avant-garde. Her involvement with the post-9/11 “War on Terror” spurred her work with prison and police abolitionist movements. Julie is the recipient of numerous grants, awards, and residencies and she exhibits work in theaters, community spaces, galleries, campgrounds, storefronts, the sides of bridges, and many other venues. Her writing has been published by AK Press, PM Press, and Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism. Julie is the founder and director of the Portland Diary Summit, an organization that facilitates gatherings around autobiographical and diaristic art forms. Originally from Poughkeepsie, New York, Julie earned an MFA from the Department of Media Study at the University at Buffalo, and a BS in Communication from Cornell University. She is currently a Professor of Art at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon.