Mushroom Madness
If you were casting your net for a diverse haul of humanity, with an eye towards obsessives and outliers, you could find no better hobby than mushroom hunting. They emerge with the rains — toothless grandmothers, second cousins from the old country, mycologists, epicureans, survivalists, shamen, artists, military toxicologists, and gnome-like naturalists — to wiggle through the underbrush for elusive fungi. Local filmmaker Sara Dosa discovered this ferment amid the wild mushroom hunting camps of Central Oregon but, in
The Last Season, her camera follows two hunters of note — a 75-year old sniper who was with the US Special Forces in Vietnam and a 46-year old platoon leader from Cambodia’s Khmer Freedom Fighters. These soldiers meet over their shared yen for the matsutake, a rare, coniferous-loving mushroom that is highly prized in Japan. Together, over the course of one season, they discover a new way of life, and a way out of the woods. Director Sara Dosa will be onhand for a post-screening Q&A.
— Silke Tudor
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