M.C. Richards: The Fire Within: Poet, potter, teacher, author of the enormously influential book on creativity, “Centering,” M.C. Richards (1916-1999) is often viewed as a forerunner of the New Age movement. Richards was on the faculty of Black Mountain College during the fertile period of the late 1940s and early 1950s when John Cage, David Tudor, Merce Cunningham, Elaine and Willem DeKooning, Arthur Penn, and Charles Olsen were among her colleagues and students. In Richard Kane and Melody Lewis-Kane’s documentary portrait, many of them testify to her remarkable qualities as an artist and creative thinker. The core of the film, however, is a series of videotapes made of Richards in 1993 when she was living in a Rudolph Steiner community where she taught children and adults with special needs. We see her working with students and also alone in her studio, where she paints and ruminates on the sources of creativity in art and life. Perhaps best of all, we hear her reading her poetry. This was a woman who inhabited language with rare passion and precision – a radiant being who described own approach as finding a way “to leave room for not knowing and trusting simultaneously.” (Amy Taubin)

Director: Richard Kane
Producers: Richard Kane, Melody Lewis-Kane

Melody Lewis-Kane is the owner of Clay Forms Pottery in Sedgwick, Maine, where her functional porcelain ware and limited edition feminine form vases are available at her studio. MC RICHARDS is her first film.