Bring MOTHERLOAD to your Classroom, LIBRARY or Campus
🏆 Audience Award - San Francisco Green Film Festival | Best International Documentary, Best Director, Best Soundtrack - Hollywood North Film Awards | Filmmaker in Residence - Napa Valley Film Festival 🏆
Sustainable Living • Women's Rights • Parenting • Social Movements • Transportation • Ecofeminism • Urban Planning • Mental Health
AVAILABLE IN MULTIPLE FORMATS INCLUDING STREAMING
Date of Completion: 2019 | Run Time: 86 minutes | Language: English | Subtitles: French, Spanish, German, Italian, Korean, Ukranian, Serbian, Croatian | License Includes: MOTHERLOAD Study Guide, Guide to Community Screenings, Access to “Extras,” Film Transcript, and Publicity Materials | Available for Virtual Post-Film Q&A: MOTHERLOAD Director Liz Canning
MOTHERLOAD is an award-winning crowdsourced documentary about our cultural shift toward isolation and disconnection, what this means for the planet’s future, and how life on a cargo bike could be an antidote. Filmmaker Liz Canning cycled everywhere until she had twins in 2008. She found modern motherhood challenging, but hauling babies via car was stifling. A desperate google search for “family bike” revealed a global movement to replace cars with long-frame bicycles designed to carry heavy loads. Liz set out to learn more about these “cargo bikes,” and MOTHERLOAD was born.
As she meets cargo bike inventors, riders and advocates all over the world, Liz discovers the history, and potential future, of the bicycle as the “ultimate social revolutionizer,” and contemplates the increasing tension between modern life and our hunter-gatherer DNA. When characters encounter cultural resistance—particularly bikelash focused on women and mothers--MOTHERLOAD draws connections to the cyclist Suffragettes and women's seemingly endless fight for bodily autonomy.
REOPEN, REUNITE & RETHINK: a new video highlighting MOTHERLOAD as a platform for discussion on how to #BuildBackBetter in terms of sustainability, equity, and the sharing of public spaces.
select REVIEWS:
Liz Canning has just produced a remarkable film called MOTHERLOAD, one of the most beautiful ‘What If’ films I have ever seen, one that offers a visceral taste of what a zero carbon world could be like. The film… is the result of 8 years work, and I love it dearly.
—Rob Hopkins, founder of the Transition Network
One particularly fascinating interview is with Dave Cohen, a therapist who studies the neuropsychology of transportation and believes humans have a fundamental need to feel connected to their natural environment. Bicycles allow this; cars do not. A car's basic architecture is designed to cut us off from the world, allowing only visual interaction, but nothing more.... As he tells some clients, "If we're utilizing technology that dissociates us from our world, that's only going to create a situation where the world will be less livable, less human."
—Treehugger
In this personal-is-political documentary, the cargo bike is the vehicle that empowers parents, and particularly mothers, to become the vanguard for a more enlightened, sustainable society.
—Sierra Club Magazine
MOTHERLOAD is the story of one woman’s emancipation from the drudgery of the carpool, the drop-off line, the grocery run, but it’s ultimately an aspirational look into a global movement of alternative parenting… And therein lies the film’s deeper appeal…Could a two-wheeled revolution be the antidote to our increasingly sedentary, tech-driven, risk-averse indoor lifestyle?
—Outside Magazine
Before the pandemic, one could have watched MOTHERLOAD and thought that Canning’s optimism about cargo bike culture might be overstated, to suggest a real transformation in the mindset of many communities.…But, the pandemic also seems to have accelerated more serious considerations of the claims made in MOTHERLOAD.
—The Utah Review
MOTHERLOAD mixes memoir with history, cultural analysis and portraits of advocates and activists…The film “took me quite by surprise,” says Joni Cooper, director of programming for DocLands. “I truly had tears in my eyes throughout — tears of happiness, anger, frustration, love and pure joy.”
—Marin Independent Journal
Academic Testimonials:
MOTHERLOAD was incredible. We had an interdisciplinary audience at Stanford University Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, including earth scientists, historians, sociologists, psychologists, lawyers and experts in gender studies. It was touching and empowering, specially for a female audience…The climate emergency is a big complex topic, but your movie urged us to action, in a way that is doable. As a mother, a researcher and a woman, I can say that your movie was much needed.
—Giulia Baroni, PhD, Stanford Visiting Scholar, Psychology
We REALLY enjoyed MOTHERLOAD. The Zoom Q&A with director Liz Canning was super helpful for my students—a very complex mix of international gen Z-ers—in discussing issues of sustainable mobility and the gendered city.
— Deike Peters, Ph.D., Director of Environmental Studies, Soka University of America
You’ve really done a fantastic job on the MOTHERLOAD Study Guide. I know the teachers will be thrilled. Such a great resource for any future educational outreach you do with the film.
—Joanne Parsont, Director of Education, California Film Institute
If you're wondering how we can do more post-covid-19 than just get back to "normal," but actually make a better world--watch this movie!…The film is about bicycling--yes, but also visionary dreams, sensory joy, soul-health, our struggle to escape the entrapment of technology, a way out of a consumption-based existence and more...
—Ted White, Adj Film Professor, Keene State College
MOTHERLOAD is such a well-though-out and excellent balance of joy, critical thought, and inspiration that now I want to share it with everyone…In the movie theatre I watched our 10 year-old come into a whole new understanding of what our family is doing. Thanks for helping us leap from the ranks of “weird but lovable” to “cutting-edge, brave, and forward-thinking” in her eyes!
—Michelle Mulder, Children’s Author
I really resonated with your story and the film. I’m not exaggerating when I say that my electric longtail bike changed my life. I can’t wait to share the MOTHERLOAD experience with the people in Corvallis and OSU.
—Sara Dalotto, Transportation Services, Oregon State University
LICENSE and FORMAT Options*
*If you require more information or can’t find what you need, please email us for assistance.
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An Internal Use with PPR* license allows current students, faculty, members or staff to:
View MOTHERLOAD “face-to-face,” in a classroom, or via streaming for REMOTE/DISTANCE LEARNING
View MOTHERLOAD in a noncommercial fashion, for the purposes of research and education
Access MOTHERLOAD from your library
For the length of the license period
Note: 1) This license covers classroom and student use but does not cover campus screenings of a film. 2) This license does not allow you to charge admission, or sublicense, digitize or duplicate the film
Public Screening license means that you may:
Host a one-time showing of the film to a public audience of any size.
Charge admission, accept donations and advertise your screening.
Note: any screening event that is open to the public requires a Public Screening license.
Formats/Time Periods:
DVD: a physical DVD. If purchased for Internal Use, the license period is for the life of format, but the disc may not be shared with people outside of your institution. If purchased for a Public Screening, the DVD must be returned after the event.
Perpetual Streaming Hosted by your School (or Library): allows your organization to host the film on a secure, password-protected institutional server with blocking software like Kanopy or Blackboard. Please email us the name of the platform via which you will host MOTHERLOAD.
14-Day Streaming hosted by MOTHERLOAD: access to a streaming link that expires 14 days after purchase, allowing for on-site streaming in class, and/or remote streaming for up to 130 students, staff, faculty or members. Note: this internal streaming link may not be shared with people outside of your institution.
Downloaded Move File: a 10gb HD movie file downloaded to your computer’s hard drive. Compatible with most current computers. Must be deleted after use for public screening.
“Riding the wheel, our own powers are revealed to us. A new sense is seemingly created.” — Bicycling for Ladies, 1896