John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office
John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office (2025) is an essay film about the mysteries of consciousness and communication channeled through neurophysiologist John C. Lilly M.D., a self-described “psychonaut” and daring experimenter who sustained an extraordinary career through uniquely adventurous scientific research with dolphins and psychedelics.
Lilly invented the isolation tank and was a primary explorer in the study of dolphin communication. His experimental projects were staged against the shifting backdrops of 1950s Cold War military science, the drug-infused counterculture of the 60s, and the environmental vanguard of the 70s. Lilly’s motto — “My body is my laboratory” — carried him into realms of radical self-investigation, while his research also helped bring dolphins and whales into the collective dreamlife of the 20th century.
Directed by Courtney Stephens and Michael Almereyda and narrated by Chloë Sevigny, John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office tells the story of Lilly’s quest, as one historian put it, to “get his hands on the steering wheel of consciousness” — a project that relied increasingly on psychedelics, leaving conventional science behind. The film reflects the scope of Lilly’s interests, the evolution of his public persona, and his interactions with equally exceptional contemporaries, including filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky.
Filmmaker Courtney Stephens will join for a post-screening conversation.
Free admission! Cosponsored by the Milstein Program in Technology and Humanity and the Department of Science & Technology Studies.
About the filmmaker
Courtney Stephens is a writer/director. Her non-fiction feature, Terra Femme, composed of amateur travel footage shot by women in the early 20th century, was a New York Times critic’s pick and has toured widely as a live performance. The American Sector (co-directed with Pacho Velez) explores the legacy of the Cold War on American self-understanding, following dozens of fragments of the Berlin Wall installed around the US. Invention, a hybrid fiction feature, premiered at Locarno in 2024, where it received a Pardo for Best Performance. Her films have been exhibited at MoMA, The National Gallery of Art, The Barbican, Istanbul Modern, Walker Art Center, Thailand Biennale, and film festivals including the Berlinale, Viennale, Thessaloniki, IDFA, SXSW, Hong Kong, and NYFF.
She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Scholarship, and grants from California Humanities, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Foundation for Contemporary Art. In addition to co-curating the miniature cinema Veggie Cloud since 2014, she has organized film screenings for The Getty, Flaherty NYC, Human Resources, and Museum of the Moving Image. Her writing has appeared in BOMB, Film Comment, Cabinet, Filmmaker, and The New Inquiry.