kviff.com
News
Festival Guide
  • Tickets and Festival Pass
  • Accommodations
  • Transportation
  • Festival cinemas
  • No Barriers project
  • Kids at the festival
  • Festival Shop
Program
  • Catalogue of films
  • Accompanying programme
  • Archive of films
  • Audience award
  • KVIFF Talks
  • Film Entry
Film Industry
  • Industry accreditation
  • Film Industry at KVIFF
  • Industry Days Programme
  • KVIFF Eastern Promises
  • KVIFF Talents
Press
  • Press accreditation
  • Press Service
  • For download
  • Press releases
  • Photogallery
  • Videogallery
About the festival
  • Festival description
  • Programme sections
  • Awards
  • History
  • We support non-profits
  • Photogallery
  • Partners
  • Why We Support the Festival
  • Contacts
CZ
Sign in
Film Archive

Shock Head Soul

Another View 2012 / Shock Head Soul / Netherlands, United Kingdom 2011

Daniel Paul Schreber was a successful lawyer who, in 1893, started receiving messages from God via a Writing Down Machine. Director Simon Pummell has again bolstered his reputation as a multimedia artist with this original and hypnotic film. Shock Head Soul pulls the viewer into the chaotic yet singular world of a man who never gave up his battle for dignity and, in the process, fundamentally influenced the field of psychiatry.

Shock Head Soul Shock Head Soul

Synopsis

Daniel Paul Schreber was a successful lawyer until 1893 when he started receiving messages directly from God via a Writing Down Machine. He spent the next nine years in an asylum where he was tortured by delusions of cosmic control, suffering from the belief that he was shifting gender and that his body was being subjected to cruel "miracles.” Schreber also believed that only his submission to God’s plan to change him into a woman would save the world. During his confinement he wrote Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, which became one of the most influential studies on the sick mind. Director Simon Pummell has again bolstered his reputation as a multimedia artist with this original and hypnotic film: via a combination of animation, documentary footage, acted sequences and interviews with contemporary psychiatrists, he pulls the viewer into the chaotic yet singular world of a man who never gave up his battle for dignity and, in the process, fundamentally influenced the field of psychiatry. He found the ideal actor to play Daniel Paul Schreber in the spellbinding Hugo Koolschijn.

About the film

86 min / Color, DCP

Director Simon Pummell / Screenplay Simon Pummell / Dir. of Photography Reinier van Brummelen / Music Roger Goula / Editor Tim Roza / Producer Janine Marmot, Femke Wolting, Bruno Felix / Production Submarine / Cast Hugo Koolschijn, Anniek Pheifer, Thom Hoffman / Contact Autlook Filmsales
www: www.shockheadsoul.com

About the director

Simon Pummell

Simon Pummell (b. 1959, Norwich, Great Britain) studied at the Royal College of Art in London, after which he made animated shorts and feature films for Channel 4. He contributed two shorts to the film which accompanied the band Queen’s album Made in Heaven. He has over forty commercials to his name. His feature-length documentary debut Bodysong was screened in 2003 at Karlovy Vary in the documentary film competition; that same year, it won a BAFTA and a BIFA (British Independent Film Award). Simon Pummell is an internationally recognised artist whose work combines drawing, animation and moving images; he creates projects across multiple platforms, exploring the boundaries of cinematic forms. Shock Head Soul is his latest feature film.

Contacts

Autlook Filmsales
Spittelberggasse 3/14, 1070, Vienna
Austria
Phone: +43 720 346 934
E-mail: [email protected]

Other partners
Newsletter

First-hand brews throughout the year.
Be among the first to learn about upcoming events and other news. We only send the newsletter when we have something to say.

Follow us on the web:

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
is part of the KVIFF Group family, which covers other projects as well:

© 2025 KVIFF GROUP

Rules for Visitors / Website visitors privacy policy / GTC / Personal Data Protection / Rules for Claim / Rules and Regulations / Contacts