"Mushrooms” was a bone fide hit at the recently concluded SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas, where Mann is a long time fest fave. But there’s more.
For this is the year of Ron.
Not only is Canada’s leading counterculture filmmaker SXSW’s darling, he is to be is to be feted with a retrospective at Toronto’s Hot Docs Film Festival and he’ll accept kudos at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana. A book of essays on Mann’s counterculture films titled “Doc in Motion”, by leading Canadian film writers, will be published this fall.
Alt Mann
Mann’s films exist on the fringes of society. “Grass” and “Comic Book Confidential” paved the way for his new age explorations with Woody Harrelson in “Go Further” and hot rod designer Ed “Big Daddy” Roth in “The Tales of Rat Fink”.
"Know Your Mushrooms" is a sly and daffy doco that follows fungus. Experts, who appear to have entirely ignored the passage of the last forty years, follow the rain and resulting mushroom crops across North and South America, besotted by the tiny puffballs. They lead the edible and psychedelic 'mushroom movement' that is alive and well across North and South America.
AB - Share a little mushroom lore.
RM - “Lewis Carroll ingested Psilocybin (a psychedelic member of the mushroom family) while he wrote “Alice in Wonderland”. The famous hookah-smoking caterpillar instructed her to eat one side of a toadstool to be taller and the other to make her smaller. There have been mushrooms cults since the beginning of time. There is horticultural evidence as well as cave drawings. A Harvard professor, Gordon Wassen, went to Old Hawkeye in New Mexico and met a shaman from a long line of mushroom worshippers. His published reports in "Life" magazine helped popularise psilocybin in North America in the 60’s counterculture. “
AB – It appears that you’re on a mission to keep the 60’s alive through your films.
RM – “My goal is to document alternative culture. I see myself as a cultural historian. I wanted to document the art and music I grew up with. It's only here for a moment. It's in the air and then it's gone. It's ephemeral. It’s been my project since I started making films.”
“There was a declaration in the Reagan 80’s that the 60’s were a failure. I wanted to look back to document how counterculture has helped. Everything was seen as a failure, sex, drugs and rock and roll were seen as excess. The contributions and artistic achievements were considered narsisstic. It wasn’t a failure. Not a failure at all. It was the spirit of change that goes on.”
AB – Will you stay true to the mission for your next film?
RM – “It’s called “Peace, Love and Microchips”. It's about how the counterculture affected the computer world. People like Steve Jobs and the cult of personality, how tech stocks plummeted after the news of his leave of absence, which is a good indicator of how people view his importance. He was inspired by Stewart Brand and “The Whole Earth Catalogue” a back to the land manual that informed the young computer guys of San Francisco. I do like Brand’s line, “Stay young, stay foolish’. That informs my work.”
AB - So it's unlikely that you're looking for your inner adult.
RM - “I’m trying to keep in touch with 18 year old in me. I started making idioms to make films about the world that I grew up with. I wanted to turn people on to subjects that may be in the subterranean world where I reside.”
Hard by the 'shrooms.
