The Foragers
Up on the Mountain
Film screening and discussion
Ⓒ Graphic design by Joud Toamah, image by Mathias Mu
Up on the Mountain
Up on the Mountain takes you deep into the forests of the American West. Here, Southeast Asian refugees, Latino immigrants and rural Americans follow the seasonal rhythms of wild mushroom harvesting, forging a way of life rooted in autonomy, community and deep knowledge of the land.
On foot and working across public lands, these foragers navigate life outside mainstream wage labor. Yet despite clear evidence of the harvest’s sustainability, they are repeatedly denied access to the forests they depend on. Director Olivier Matthon exposes the racial and class inequalities embedded in natural resource policies, while shining a light on the resilience and ingenuity of these often invisible communities.
After the screening, join us for a conversation exploring the film’s central themes: informal economies, survival at the edges of capitalism and the politics of access to nature. Director Olivier Matthon will share personal insights from his own life as a mushroom picker and the making of the film, while historian Benoît Henriet (VUB) reflects on foraging and post-colonial dynamics. Anthropologist Alice Vittoria (VUB) will moderate the discussion.
PROGRAM
19:00 - Introduction
19:15 - Film screening
20:45 - Discussion with Olivier Matthon and Benoît Henriet, moderated by Alice Vittoria.
21:30 - End
TICKETS
Soon more info.
Part of The Foragers: Engagements beyond the Human, an interdisciplinary art-science project that brings together artists, researchers and enthusiasts to reimagine the ancient practice of foraging as a bold, imaginative and future-facing method.
Olivier Matthon is a commercial mushroom picker and documentary filmmaker who graduated with a B.A. in Ethnography, Political Ecology, and Nonfiction Writing from the Evergreen State College. His work has been published by Pioneers Press, the UTNE Reader, and High Country News Magazine. His photos of mushroom pickers were part of the 2022 exhibition “Impossible Sauvage” at the Museum of Ethnography of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Originally from Québec, he now lives in the Pacific Northwest.
Benoît Henriet is Associate Professor of History at VUB and Principal Investigator of the ERC project FORAGENCY: Foraging, Colonialism and More-than-Human Agency in Central Africa. His research focuses on the (post)colonial history of Central Africa from a bottom-up perspective, with a growing emphasis on human–environment entanglements. From 2025 to 2027, he holds the Casterman-Hamers Chair in the History and Philosophy of Sciences at VUB, through which he co-curates the interdisciplinary series The Foragers, in collaboration with VUB Crosstalks and artistic researcher Gosie Vervloessem.
Alice Vittoria is a social and environmental anthropologist. She recently completed her PhD in Social Anthropology at University College London. Her research interests span post-colonial forest management and socio-ecological change; mobility, sedentarisation, and land rights; and more-than-human agency and multi-species ethnography. She joined the FORAGENCY project at VUB as a postdoctoral researcher, where she studies the impacts of colonialism on local communities’ relationship with the environment in Central Africa, with a particular focus on medicinal plants and healing practices.
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