John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office, by Courtney Stephens and Michael Almereyda

Los Angeles Filmforum, the Philosophical Research Society and Bibliomancers present

John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office, by Courtney Stephens and Michael Almereyda

Sunday November 30, 2025, 7:30 pm

At the Philosophical Research Society, 3910 Los Feliz Blvd., Los Angeles CA

Tickets: $14.64 including fees, at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/john-lilly-the-earth-coincidence-control-office-2025-screening-tickets-1964596903223?aff=oddtdtcreator

7th House, Bibliomancers, and Los Angeles Filmforum are proud to present JOHN LILLY AND THE EARTH COINCIDENCE CONTROL OFFICE (2025), Courtney Stephens and Michael Almereyda's fascinating documentary about the infamous psychonautic scientist whose experiments with LSD, sensory deprivation, and dolphin communication define an era of boundary pushing, experimental research of consciousness. In celebration of the curatorial small press Bibliomancers' newest book New Age Grave, we will welcome co-writer/director Courtney Stephens in person for a sure-to-be captivating Q&A, along with a performance by avant-electronic sound artist Twig Harper. Copies of Bibliomancers' New Age Grave and John Lilly t-shirts by Twig Harper will be available for sale, too!

From the deep end of the psychedelic age, replete with isolation tanks, LSD research, and interspecies communication — JOHN LILLY AND THE EARTH COINCIDENCE CONTROL OFFICE tells the mind-bending story of John C. Lilly, the man who tried to map consciousness itself.

John Cunningham Lilly, M.D. (1915–2001) forged a singular and often perilous career through some of the most adventurous scientific experiments of the 20th century. His work unfolded across the shifting landscapes of Cold War research, the LSD-charged counterculture, and the ecological awakenings of the 1970s. Lilly sought, as one historian put it, “to get his hands on the steering wheel of consciousness” — a pursuit that grew ever more entangled with psychedelics and mysticism, and which ultimately carried him beyond the bounds of conventional science. A neuroscientist turned cosmic explorer, Lilly invented the sensory deprivation tank (his boundary-pushing work with LSD and sensory isolation inspired Ken Russell’s Altered States) and became one of the first to seriously investigate communication with dolphins, establishing his own laboratories in Miami and on the island of St. Thomas. In one now-notorious experiment, he paired a young female researcher with a male dolphin in a partially flooded house — a study that would ripple through popular culture and inspire The Day of the Dolphin. Once hailed as a visionary, later dismissed as a heretic, Lilly became a cult figure whose theories of reality would echo through countercultural circles and beyond.

 Narrated by Chloë Sevigny and featuring reflections from figures such as Alejandro Jodorowsky, John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office dives deep into the enigma of Lilly’s life and legacy. Directors Michael Almereyda (Nadja, William Eggleston in the Real World) and Courtney Stephens (Invention, The American Sector) weave together rare archival footage, recorded experiments, and fragments of cultural ephemera to illuminate a mind forever pushing at the edge between science and revelation.

Part portrait, part séance for a lost era, the film traces Lilly’s transformation from respected researcher to countercultural oracle to maligned “crackpot”, capturing the sweep of his ideas and the mythic arc of his public persona. Revisiting a time when the frontiers of consciousness, technology, and human potential still felt infinite, it poses the same question that haunted Lilly himself: how far can we go — and what might we find — when we peer beyond the boundaries of the mind?

"...what sets apart Michael Almereyda and Courtney Stephens’s John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office is that the professor isn’t the documentary’s only focus. Lilly’s experiments on interspecies communication are secondary to the discourses they were embedded in, which is to say Earth Coincidence isn’t a biopic so much as a study of a few tumultuous decades in US history, and how ideas––even and especially the most absurd––can seep into culture." -- Leonardo Goi, The Film Stage

Courtney Stephens is the director of four feature films. The American Sector (with Pacho Velez) follows slabs of the Berlin Wall installed around the US, and was named one of the best films of 2021 in The New Yorker. 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. John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office (with Michael Almereyda) explores the life of neuroscientist and psychedelics pioneer John C. Lilly, and Invention is a hybrid fiction film about an esoteric healing device that premiered at Locarno. Her films have been exhibited at MoMA, The National Gallery of Art, The Barbican, Fondazione Prada, Jeu de Paume, ICA London, and film festivals including the Berlinale, Rotterdam, Viennale, New Directors/New Films, IDFA, Visions Du Réel, Morelia, and the New York Film Festival. Her work has been released theatrically in the US, UK, and France, and she is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Scholarship, and grants from the Sloan Foundation and the Foundation for Contemporary Art.  She has co-curated the miniature cinema Veggie Cloud since 2014, and organized film programs for The Getty, Museum of the Moving Image, Flaherty NYC, and Human Resources. Her writing has appeared in Film Comment, BOMB, Filmmaker, The New Inquiry, and Cabinet.