Stuff to Do: Benefit Screening of Up On the Mountain

Jodi Darby and I are hosting a screening of Up On The Mountain, a film by Olivier Matthon to raise money for his next project, documenting the stories of immigrants detained at the Tacoma Northwest Detention Facility, you know, the place where they take people who have been kidnapped by ICE. Oli has been filming in the tents of Advocates for Immigrants in Detention Northwest, who set up outside and greet people when they get out with beverages, and support to get them home.

Oli will show an 8 minute preview, full of powerful interviews and stunning images.

Please support the making of this film, if you can.

Up on the Mountain is a feature length documentary that follows three different groups of commercial mushroom pickers as they travel on the “mushroom circuit”—a year-round migration that can take them anywhere from Alaska to California, Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming—to harvest wild mushrooms from public forests.

Despite evidence of the sustainability of the harvest, commercial mushroom pickers are repeatedly denied access to public forests. The Forest Service is understaffed and lacks the funding to manage the resource. Forest managers often find themselves overwhelmed by the sudden arrival of hundreds of independent pickers, many of whom think they should have the right to harvest freely from public land. They accuse the Forest Service of privileging the logging industry and of racial profiling.

In a direct cinema style, Up on the Mountain offers an observation of some of the power dynamics that structure our society. We hope the film will contribute to improve the working conditions of the pickers, the management of our public forests, and the relationship between pickers and managers.

“A classic case of political ecology, artfully rendered. The forest, which at first is a refuge and a source of livelihood, becomes suddenly a place where one fears being kidnapped. What public are public forests for?”
–Claude Péloquin, Environmental Geography Researcher

"Up on the Mountain" is a fascinating look into the world of mushroom pickers and an unwitting portrait of the American dream. Resonating with the mycorrhizal network of the mushrooms, the filmmakers achieve to empathically reveal the complex social entanglements of mushroom hunters seeking out liberty in a fractured society. A great companion piece to Anna Tsing's groundbreaking "The Mushroom at the End of the World". – Jeff Silva, Filmmaker/ Anthropologist, member of La fabrique des écritures ethnographiques, Marseille