Shock Head Soul   SP-2012 

A mixture of documentary and fiction film about Daniel Paul Schreber, who wrote a famous autobiography about his psychiatric past, Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken (1903). Pummel interlaced book fragments with animation and interviews with modern psychoanalysts to produce a cinematic approximation of a psychosis.

Daniel Paul Schreber had spent nine years in a psychiatric clinic when, in 1903, he published Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken. His book 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.
Schreber’s notes are the most important source for this experimental portrait of the British crossover filmmaker Simon Pummell (Bodysong) who, in an original, challenging way, mixes documentary, fiction and animation. Interviews with psychoanalysts, dressed in fin de siècle suits, are juxtaposed with fragments from Schreber’s prose, his typewriter floating through space like a glowing planet, and performances by the Dutch actor Hugo Koolschijn, who portrays Schreber as crazy and tormented and equally convinced of himself.