Know Your Mushrooms

From documentary filmmaker Ron Mann—cinema's poet laureate of popular subculture and counterculture: from comic books to poetry to the history of marijuana—comes Know Your Mushrooms, which offers a psychedelic soundtrack, playful animation, and trippy imagery, while covering all facets of fungi culture. Mann travels to the Telluride Mushroom Festival with mycologist Larry Evans (described as the “Indiana Jones of mushrooms”), who serves as field guide to the many varieties; and he explores the various cultural aspects of the topic, from the gourmet to the recreational to the spiritual and medicinal, with the help of “mushroom guru” and academic Gary Lincoff, who shares stories from myth, legend, and literature. Mann likes to entertain while he educates, and he tosses off his factoids with groovy animated interstitials and tongue-in-cheek “Fun with Fungi” quizzes. Botany takes a backseat to the colorful characters and the rather dubious claims tossed in from the fringes of shroom-dom—from the suggestion that mushrooms are an alien life form to one man's assertion that Jesus was actually an evolved mushroom man. But Know Your Mushrooms is a highly entertaining trip through fact and fiction, from ancient culture to contemporary counterculture and epicurean dinner tables. DVD extras include an informational short, a lecture by Lincoff from the Telluride festival, deleted scenes, a video recording of a radio interview with Mann, a listing of fungophile clubs in North America, and a “Fun with Fungi” interactive trivia game. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (S. Axmaker)