JOHN LILLY
A new documentary about the groundbreaking scientist and a feature inspired by his work.
JOHN LILLY AND THE EARTH
COINCIDENCE CONTROL OFFICE 2026
The daring experimenter Dr. John C. Lilly dedicated his life to radical self-investigation and unlocking the mysteries of consciousness and communication. “My body is my laboratory” was the motto, and his research on the language of dolphins and whales – as well as psychedelics and sensory deprivation – assured his own cult status in 20th-century pop culture as the basis for Ken Russel’s Altered States and Mike Nichols’s The Day of the Dolphin.
Directors Michael Almareyda and Courtney Stephens, along with narrator Chloë Sevigny, explore the life of a determined scientist and his experiments into the psychonautical unknown.
Tuesday, May 19
Director: Michael Almareyda &
Courtney Stephens
Runtime: 89 min., USA
Language: English
Director: Ken Russell
Starring: William Hurt, Blair Brown, Bob Balaban
Runtime: 103 min., USA
Language: English
ALTERED STATES 1980
The ultimate cinematic head trip of the 1980s, British renegade Ken Russell’s first Hollywood production—adapted by the legendary screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky from his own novel—is part hallucinogenic freak-out, part gonzo creature feature, part transcendent love story, all played at a fever pitch. When researcher Eddie Jessup (William Hurt) begins using himself as a test subject for his mind-expanding psychological experiments, it sends him on an increasingly dangerous, substance-fueled odyssey from humankind’s primordial past to the outer limits of consciousness. It’s all visualized by Russell in a psychedelic supernova of out-there imagery that encompasses everything from the pagan to the cosmic sublime, culminating in a brain-wave-blasting battle between the mind and the heart.