Biography
Courtney Stephens is the director of four feature films.The American Sector (with Pacho Velez) documents slabs of the Berlin Wall installed around the US. 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. Both The American Sector and Invention were named among The New Yorker‘s best films of the year. Her work been exhibited at MoMA, The National Gallery of Art, The Barbican, Fondazione Prada, Jeu de Paume, ICA London, the Performa Biennial, The Academy Museum, and film festivals including the Berlinale, Rotterdam, Locarno, Viennale, New Directors/New Films, IDFA, Visions Du Réel, Hong Kong, 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.