The Culturist Film Club x Jameel Arts Centre on July 4: John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office
Jameel’s Summer Cinema programme, in collaboration with The Culturist Film Club
Film 2 of 5:
The second film from this series is a documentary about John C. Lilly (1915–2001) and his unconventional research methods and experimentations into human and animal consciousness. I first saw it at IFFR last year, and in my festival roundup I described it as a “thoughtful and insightful film about a specific history of American counterculture” and “Learning about John Lilly, a visionary seeking another realm and interspecies communication sounds wondrous, but it is from a long lost era. Today, there’s no room for scientific research and discovery that doesn’t lead to quick profits.”
I’m looking forward to watching it again and unpacking it with my guest speaker and audience.
More information below.
Free to attend, but pre-registration is required.
JOHN LILLY AND THE EARTH COINCIDENCE CONTROL OFFICE
Michael Almereyda, Courtney Stephens, 2025, 89 min
John Cunningham Lilly M.D. (1915-2001) sustained an extraordinary career through uniquely adventurous scientific research. 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.
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. Lilly invented the isolation tank and was a primary explorer in the study of dolphin communication, founding his own lab in Miami and St. Thomas, pairing a young female researcher with a young male dolphin in a partially-flooded house. In addition to this experiment’s circulation in pop culture, Lilly served as the inspiration for two Hollywood movies, The Day of the Dolphin and Altered States. 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.
“John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office 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
The screening will be followed by a discussion with playwright and screenwriter Rebecca Crookshank.
Date: July 4, 19:30-21:30
Venue: Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai (location map)
Free to attend, please register here.
Director’s Bio:
Michael Almereyda’s films range from narrative features and shorts to documentary portraits and diary films. Skinningrove (2013), centered on photographer Chris Killip, was awarded Best Non-Fiction Short Film at the Sundance Film Festival and Best Film at the Ann Arbor Film Festival. William Eggleston in the Real World (2005) and Paradise (2009) were nominated for Best Documentary Films at the IFP Gotham Awards. Almereyda’s work has premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, the Venice International Film Festival, NYFF, TIFF, Rotterdam, Berlin, Locarno, and Rome. He has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and Creative Capital, and his essays have appeared in The New York Times, Artforum, Bookforum, Film Comment, The Believer, and booklets for the Criterion Collection.
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.
Speaker’s Bio:
Rebecca Crookshank is a British-Irish playwright, screenwriter, director, actor and producer. Her writing has become a prominent voice with audiences around the globe, such as the BBC and Channel 4 News. Rebecca has a unique story; at 17, she joined the Royal Air Force, this experience as a young airwoman working in radar and in a predominantly male environment informed her writing of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, an award-winning solo play published by Bloomsbury, which premiered in Edinburgh, toured the UK, then received its international premiere on 42nd Street, New York. Shortlisted for a Liberty Human Rights Arts Award, four Broadway World nominations. Her Channel 4 News interview on military harassment received 5 million views and was selected as one of the three playwrights on attachment to the Old Vic on their Old Vic 12 programme. She is a BAFTA Connect inaugural member with multiple British Council artistic residencies in Vietnam and a guest residency at Alserkal Arts Foundation UAE resulting in an invitation for a Golden Talent Visa. Her body of work has been funded by the BBC, Sky TV, Arts Council England and is inspired by universal womanhood, cross-cultural friendship, and her global research which is rooted and sparked by her Scottish traveller showfolk heritage.
She recently founded her production company Mammal Haus, a writer-led company with a female lens focusing on untamed stories. Mammal Haus is building a swelling slate of multiple projects across the globe in theatre, film and television. Rebecca is the founder and Off The Grid, an artist salon for Gulf-based artists hosting curated creative salons in a secret location. This year Rebecca was selected as member of the inaugural Amazon MGM UAE / NFTS / Dubai Film and Games Commission cohort with her original series ’SPIDERZ’. Currently she's in post-production on a short film called Frog, and working on the move across Vietnam in development on a feature film with Lunar Lander films directed by Ham Tran and building a slate of collaborative projects with Paula McGann at Faf Films. Perpetually stretched between systems and across time-zones, Rebecca writes and makes between was planned and can’t be controlled by adapting to what actually needs to shift and makes it happen.
https://www.mammal.haus
Links to rest of the screenings:
June 20 - Memories of Princess Mumbi
July 8 - Afterlives
August 1 - Do You Love Me
August 15 — The Blazing Sun