John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office

With a stunning array of archival images and sounds, renowned filmmakers Courtney Stephens and Michael Almereyda explore the life and ideas of intrepid mid-century utopian neuroscientist, John C. Lilly, whose unorthodox experimentations into human and animal consciousness were controversial in methodology but far-reaching in intent.

Featuring startling archival images and audio interviews, and with a narration voiced by Chloë Sevigny, this collaboration between filmmakers Courtney Stephens and Michael Almereyda charts a cornucopia of ideas and impressions of a long-lost era in US counterculture, a time when literally anything seemed possible.

Wildly intrepid neuroscientist John C. Lilly was part of a constellation of mid-twentieth century utopian scientists, who worked at the nexus of psychology, ethnology, psychoanalysis, animal studies and psychedelic experimentation. Lilly’s ideas around society and the potential of human (and animal) awareness – notably his highly unorthodox (NASA-funded!) LSD experimentations with dolphins – were radical for the time and seem undoubtedly alien from today’s perspective. However Stephens and Almereyda recognise their subject as “a person who, with considerable fluidity, traded scientific investigation for adventures in mysticism, fantasy, and showmanship” and offer a sensitive interpretation of his far-reaching concepts for contemporary times.

Poetic and essayistic, John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office brings together both filmmakers’ fascination with scientific experimentation and perception, to animate a historical era due for reconsideration, despite the studies’ often methodological flaws, as it anticipates today’s similarly expanded considerations of consciousness.

– Michelle Carey

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