Finding Blake’s formal announcement of the project’s film: Finding Blake: meeting William Blake in the 21st Century, or – memorialising the vegetal ephemeral.
“Forgive what you do not approve, & love me for this energetic exertion of my talent”
— William Blake, Jerusalem, The Emanation of the Giant Albion
When director James Murray-White heard that a new ledger stone for the final resting place of artist-poet William Blake was going to be made in his neighbourhood, in the renowned Kindersley Workshop in Cambridge, it reawakened his desire to explore Blake’s work and legacy. He set off on a three-year journey to find the contemporary relevance of this 18th and 19th century creative and spiritual force.
‘Finding Blake’ is the resulting feature-length document of the journey. James interviewed poets, priests, psychoanalysts and a rapper to get at the heart of Blake’s relevance today. Interwoven through the film is the creation of the stone itself — a stunning work of craft — from the stone being mined in Portland, Dorset, to its unveiling ceremony in the ‘Dissenters Graveyard’ in Bunhill Fields in London on the 191st anniversary of Blake’s death. We see the fine detail of the process: from choosing the stone, to its sizing and cutting out and bevelling, to the letter drawing out and then cutting, to gilding, and its final setting.
The film includes some of Blake’s key poems, and animated images, to take the audience into the mind of the artist, and to stimulate the deep imagination so lacking in our age.
“The green and pleasant land that Blake spoke about lives inside human beings: it’s the conversation between a possible template of happiness inside us, and an expression of that in the outer world”
— David Whyte, poet & philosopher, in the film.
Released in the wake of the recent Blake exhibition at Tate London, this brand new documentary seeks to continue the process of opening up this ‘poet – artist – prophet’ to a wider audience, and show his very real relevance at the heart of contemporary culture in Britain and the world in the midst of massive shifts in consciousness and active rebellion on our streets. As we today urgently seek to find answers to the climate emergency and the rank social injustice that divides communities, William Blake pointed towards finding a spiritual unity internally and externally, and strove to find his own system before the ‘mind-forged manacles’ of the industrial capitalist system enslaved him.
Completed just in time for submission to Sheffield DocFest, Finding Blake has a ‘crew and crowdfunders’ preview screening in mid-March, and screening dates are being planned in Cambridge, Bristol, London, Stroud, Newcastle, Cornwall, Cumbria and Scotland, as well as a pay-per-view online option (with additional footage and scenes). All details will be available shortly here on the project website — where, of course, we have many articles exploring all aspects of Blake’s life, career, and legacy, written by a wide range of scholars and creatives.
I give you the end of a golden string;
Only wind it into a ball:
It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate,
Built in Jerusalem’s wall.
— William Blake, Jerusalem: ‘To the Christians’
Notes
You can follow the development of the film Finding Blake through our earlier posts, and at our Finding Blake films at a glance section, including James Murray-White’s personal reflections on the film, Editing Blake — and Revealing our Film Trailer.