mother : un/tethered

mother : un/tethered tells the story of three women, three phases of motherhood, and the paradox of holding grief and joy alongside beauty and hardship when it comes to mothering. 

Part art-documentary, part dance film, mother : un/tethered follows three female artists, Bailey Harper, Chelsea Retzloff, and Divya Maus, as they navigate deeply personal relationships to motherhood across the birth, life, and death cycle. Through evocative movement, original music, singing, and intimate interview, the film asks each of its subjects to respond to the prompt: "When I think about my mother..." in terms of familial mother, inner mother, archetypal mother, and Mother Earth.

Shot in breathtaking mountainous and oceanic landscapes across Colorado and California, mother : un/tethered weaves the female body into the body of the earth, drawing a through-line between the way we treat our mothers and the way we treat the planet that sustains us. The film asks: what do we take for granted? What have we forgotten to honor? And what becomes possible when we finally stop and acknowledge what and who we cannot live without?

mother : un/tethered was filmed on the ancestral lands of the Ute, Cheyenne, and Arapaho peoples (Colorado) and the Chumash and Tongva peoples (California). HOLDTIGHT acknowledges these lands and the communities who have long stewarded them, and recognizes that our relationship to the earth cannot be separated from our relationship to its original caretakers.