Reviews:

"An inspiring film about a brilliant teacher and artist." — Arthur Penn, director

"This articulately perceptive film brings her close again, lets her make clear with all her unaggressive power that art is a gate, not a product, wisdom a source, not a judgment." — Robert Creeley, poet

"Unexpectedly moving" — Anne Fabbri, art critic/curator

"... A challenge to the very assumptions about how we 'author' our lives." — Mary Emma Harris, author,
The Art of Black Mountain College

"A masterpiece. I will watch it over and over and over" — Vicki Pollard, acupuncturist

"One of the most validating descriptions of people with special needs (out of M.C.'s mouth!) ... I have ever witnessed." —Clemens Pietzner, former Exec. Director, Camphill Foundation

"M.C. holding that leaf of lettuce up to the light, lovely in its green transparency, and saying that there is in that leaf the beauty and the unknowable mystery of creation in the universe — an unforgettable image in its simplicity and complexity." —Michael Rumaker, author, Black Mountain Days

Photo by Jonathan Williams

Synopsis:

A new hour documentary "M.C. Richards: The Fire Within" by Maine filmmaker Richard Kane and potter/filmmaker Melody Lewis-Kane is an adventure into discovering the source of our creativity told through M.C.'s life (1916-1999). In addition to her most famous underground classic, Centering: In Pottery, Poetry and the Person, and Toward Wholeness: Rudolf Steiner Education in America, M.C. was a pivotal figure at the famously experimental Black Mountain College serving as head of faculty (1949-51) with those who later became avant garde luminaries in the New York art scene — Robert Rauschenberg, Elaine and Willem deKooning, Arthur Penn, Robert Motherwell, Merce Cunningham and John Cage among others.

In the film we witness M.C. engaging in contemplative questioning regarding the nature of art, imagination, wholeness, community, and our place in the cosmos. She inspires us to live creatively, to believe in ourselves, to experience the sensuality of existence. But this is a film not only about M.C., but about all of us and our quest to be real, authentic, creators of art and community. The film premiered in New York and Philadelphia and has now started on a 22+ U.S. City tour.

As one of the most influential art educators in America, the ideas of M.C. Richards and her seminal non-fiction work Centering have been used to inspire the 2005 National Council for Education in the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) conference theme — Centering: Community, Clay and Culture — where her closest associate, Paulus Berensohn, will make a major address.

Also active in Greenwich House Pottery, M.C. was a central player in the New York avant-garde scene in the early 50s when she lived in Stony Point, New York with composers John Cage and David Tudor, potters Karen Karnes and David Weinrib, architect Paul Williams and children's author Vera Williams.

But her influence goes beyond the visual art world. As the first English translator of THE THEATER AND ITS DOUBLE, by French actor/playwright/political activist Antonin Artaud, M.C. is credited by director Arthur Penn and avant garde Living Theater co-founder Judith Malina, as being instrumental in changing the course of theater in America for all time. The translation, to this day, is considered the authority.

In this thought-provoking documentary, you hear from a cadre of her associates and followers as they carry on her important work of inspiring people to live creatively. The hour documentary features interviews with many renowned artists, poets, thinkers, and theologians including: Marjory Bankson, Paulus Berensohn, Julia Connor, Merce Cunningham, Adriana Diaz, Martin Duberman, Howard Evans, Matthew Fox, Gertrude Hughes, Karen Karnes, George Kokis, Judith Malina, Amy Evans McClure, Arthur Penn, and Robert Turner.

Sponsored by: Black Mountain College Museum & Arts Center and Chester Springs Studio.

With support from: the Humanities-and-the-Arts initiative, administered by the Pennsylvania Humanities Council and funded principally by the Pennsylvania Arts Council; the North Carolina Humanities Council; the New York Council for the Humanities; the Rudolf Steiner Foundation; the Rudolf Steiner Institute; the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, Inc. and many individuals.