Mushroom activity seen through a night lens (Courtesy photo)

Feast Your Eyes on the Fantastically Bizarre World of Mushrooms

By Frank Sabatini Jr.

We were already sold on the fact that Icelandic music icon Bjork is the narrator. Add to that a most intriguing and mysterious subject matter, and we end up with the 40-minute film titled Fungi: The Web of Life.

The acclaimed documentary is showing at Balboa Park’s San Diego Natural History Museum through Dec. 27. It is a sufficiently long run that gives everyone an opportunity to understand why life as we know it can not exist without mushrooms.

Through time-lapse photography and a fascinating delve into obscure facts about fungi, the film provides an almost-eerie glimpse at how trees and plants on forest floors depend on fungi to survive. It also looks at important medicines we use today that are derived from mushrooms. Viewers largely agree after seeing the film that ‘shrooms are probably the strangest organisms on the planet.

The movie shows daily at various times in the museum’s Big Screen Theater. It is included with general admission.