What’s fascinating about this film is the degree to which the cargo bike revolution is driven by mothers, with 75% of users being women. We just have to have the right infrastructure” she says. When the right conditions are created, cycling flourishes, a lesson observed the world over. It’s because in the 1970s, after sustained protests, the city was redesigned to be completely safe for bicycles.
#MOTHER LOAD MOVIE FULL#
The fact that the streets of Amsterdam are full of bicycles is not just because people in Amsterdam love bikes. A cargo bike revolution won’t happen by accident. It’s a theme that runs through this film. If we are listening, we’ll take a step towards connection and balance”. If we are listening, we’ll see the opportunity here to rethink the culture. “I think of climate change as a cry for help from the forgotten part of our world. Her cargo bike becomes part of her own response to the climate crisis. She meets amazing passionate advocates from across the US, and the world. In her enthusiasm she starts to connect to online cargo bike communities, and decides to make a film about it. Her life was transformed by the discovery of cargo bikes as a different way to get herself, her children, her shopping and everything else, around her city.
The core of the film is Liz Canning’s own story, going from being a keen cyclist to having young twins, then feeling the need to have a car and reaching a point where her cycling life felt like it was most likely over. Visionary engineers who recognised the appalling impacts of car culture and who dreamt that there must be another way. The film meets some of the early pioneers from the 1970s, who created the first models all around the world, some of whom lost their shirts by being the early pioneers before the rest of the world was ready. Cargo bikes are, for the uninitiated, like ‘bikes-plus’, bikes adapted to carry goods, children, pets, surfboards, firewood, farm produce, shopping, whatever (although not all at the same time). ‘Motherload’ is a film about the cargo bike revolution building around the world. It is the result of 8 years work, and I love it dearly.
The film was crowdfunded, crowdsourced and is currently being ‘crowd-distributed’. 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 that world would be like. Afterwards when I ask people to share what they experienced, wherever I do it, I get mostly the same reflections. It is, for many, a very powerful experience. I invite them, in their pairs, to sit in silence for a minute, using their imagination with all its senses, to see what they see, hear, feel, smell, taste.
When I do talks, I often include an exercise where I invite people in the audience, sitting in pairs, to travel forward in time 11 years to the time when we have attained a zero carbon society. Septem/ 2 comments Film review: ‘Motherload’
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