Fantastic Fungi

Learn more and get tickets for the Sept 25th screening and discussion here: https://fantasticfungi.com/denver/

When so many are struggling for connection, inspiration and hope, Fantastic Fungi brings us together as interconnected creators of our world. 

Fantastic Fungi, directed by Louie Schwartzberg, is a consciousness-shifting film that takes us on an immersive journey through time and scale into the magical earth beneath our feet, an underground network that can heal and save our planet. Through the eyes of renowned scientists and mycologists like Paul Stamets, best-selling authors Michael Pollan, Eugenia Bone, Andrew Weil and others, we become aware of the beauty, intelligence and solutions the fungi kingdom offers us in response to some of our most pressing medical, therapeutic, and environmental challenges. 

Join us for the September 25th screening in Denver followed by a panel discussion hosted by The Nowak Society. 

Ken Kassenbrock, MD, PhD has been an avid hunter of wild mushrooms since the late 1970s. Trained as a physician-scientist, he has worked in Cell and Molecular Biology, including post-doctoral work with the brewer’s yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Although his interests in fungi were initially largely culinary, over the years they mushroomed (what else?) to include other aspects of the biology of this fascinating kingdom including ecology, toxicology, biotechnology and cultivation. Avocation and vocation eventually converged, and Ken currently teaches Mycology (mushrooms, molds, mildews and more) at Colorado State University, where he is on the faculty in the Biology Department. 

Cici Dunn is a Cannabis/Hemp Industry Eco-Fashion, Marketing & Media Professional for more than two decades, having helped build international brands like HoodLamb Hemp Tailor and Hemp Works in Amsterdam and HoodLAB in Denver. Cici also works as Content Co-Producer for The Adam Dunn Show, a Cannabis Podcast with a mission to bring forward the truth about the Cannabis Plant. Cici is academically trained as a Social psychologist with a focus on ‘Gender, Sexuality & Culture’.

Moreover, as a lifelong Plant Advocate and avid Organic Gardener focused on healing and nutrition, she is a self-taught Herb-enthusiast that embraces a lifestyle of profound plant knowledge and Hemp at the core for a more sustainable world.

Carly Anderson Stewart is a PhD Candidate at CU Boulder researching fungal evolutionary biology. She's building a phylogenetic tree–a tree of life–of the charismatic, global lichen genus Cladonia. Building this tree involves collecting as much diversity in as many regions as possible, including venturing to remote regions of the Earth looking for rare and undescribed species of lichens. 

Also on the panel are Nowak Society Board Members Katie Klumb, Nathan Bloodsworth, and Dr. Rob Colbert, all sharing their stories of wonder and awe with fantastic fungi.