John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office

Ground-breaking scientist, pop-culture icon, or madman? John C. Lilly pursued ultimate knowledge through research on dolphins and psychedelics – until his pioneering scientific ingenuity blurred into self-destructive obsession.

This kaleidoscopic collage of archival footage, home movies, and interviews traces the life of Lilly, the polarising American neuroscientist-turned-psychonaut, as he slips from groundbreaking research into paranoia. His audacious experiments – sensory deprivation tanks and NASA-funded LSD studies with dolphins – were shaped by the Cold War and blossomed alongside the rise of psychedelics. They later fuelled New Age spiritualism as well as pop culture and Hollywood (The Day of the Dolphin, Altered States). Narrated by Chloë Sevigny, this witty portrait of a 20th-century genius flirting with madness explores not only Lilly’s bewildering journey and bizarre legacy but also the strange, symbiotic collisions between science, culture, and imagination.

– Saulė Savanevičiūtė

TALK

Patricia Pisters, professor of Media Studies with a specialization in Film Studies at the University of Amsterdam, will give an introduction beforehand. As a film-philosopher her work investigates film and media in relation to (altered states of) consciousness. She is interested in the aesthetics and politics of art, film and media culture and investigates media ecologies from an elemental perspective.