When you were there, did you try the matsutake mushrooms? We ended up gaining the trust with a lot of people. We’d help with babysitting, chores, and clean up after a party. We started to make friends with the family that ran the Noodle House. We started going there all the time and being upfront about who we were and what we were doing. It’s a very lively, fun, makeshift restaurant in the middle of the woods. People eat there-they serve the best pho and fried rice you can ever imagine. The Noodle House is the social hub of the camp. Basically, this tent city pops up at the beginning of September, and then at the beginning of November with the snowfall, everyone leaves for the next mushroom harvest. For example, there’s this place called the Noodle House, which is at the heart of the pop-up mushroom hunting community.
We did so just by being as present and embedded in the community as much as possible. You’re not just going to open up your bank account to show people your numbers, you know? We really had to work hard to build trust. The world of the Oregon mushroom hungers is a pretty tight-knit, off-the-grid community and people talk about their mushroom patches as their bank account. On embedding herself in the mushroom picking community Momo Chang Kouy Loch in the mushroom hunters camp in Chemult, Oregon. Her film airs on The World Channel on Tuesday, May 31th. Among the makeshift tent city, she finds an incredible story of a pair of mushroom hunters: Kouy Loch, a former Cambodian soldier, and Roger Higgins, an aging Vietnam War veteran.ĭosa, who is of Italian and Eastern European Jewish descent, talks about what it was like living and making a film in the woods, her background in cultural anthropology, and the very rare and valuable matsutake mushrooms. Shot on location in Chemult, Oregon, Dosa spent three months embedded in the tight-knit community of mushroom pickers to direct her first documentary, The Last Season. These groups have a few things in common, including being war veterans and finding solace -and a source of income -in the Oregon woods. In addition, Oregon also has a large population of American Vietnam war veterans, some of whom are also mushroom pickers. When she learned that the migrant workers mostly comprised of Southeast Asian refugees, it piqued her interest. Sara Dosa spent a season embedded in the tight-knit community of mushroom pickers in the Oregon woods to direct her first documentary, "The Last Season."īerkeley, CA-based director Sara Dosa first came across the subject of seasonal matsutake mushroom hunters in a cultural anthropology class.
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