Looking for Mushrooms

Directed by Bruce Conner

During his year in Mexico, Conner hosted psychedelic guru Timothy Leary, who he had met on an earlier visit to New York. Conner and Leary occupied themselves with mushroom hunts in the Mexican countryside. It’s not clear whether their hunts were successful. But Conner’s staccato home-movies of their walks – combined with movies of previous mushroom hunts in San Francisco – became his film Looking for Mushrooms. The film rushes through the rustic landscape of rural Mexico, flitting past houses and through a crumbling graveyard. Not to be confused with Conner's re-edited 1996 version of Looking for Mushroom.