Joan Baez on Visual Memoir Doc ‘I Am a Noise’ in Which She Reveals Abuse From Her Father and Talks Heartbreak by Bob Dylan (EXCLUSIVE)
variety.comNick Vivarelli International Correspondent In “Joan Baez: I Am a Noise,” which is premiering on Feb. 17 at the Berlin Film Festival, the folk icon with a supple soprano voice and a long history of activism, takes a disarmingly candid look on her life as she faces the end of her 60-year musical career.
The immersive doc is co-directed by Karen O’Connor, Miri Navasky, and Maeve O’Boyle. They interweave Baez’s 2018 Fare Thee Well final concert tour with her early years, her rise to fame, struggles with drugs that ensued, and a darker psychological thread involving a form of child abuse on the part of Baez’s father.
A surprising level of intimacy is reached thanks to a wealth of material obtained from Baez’s meticulously preserved personal archives comprising home movies, diaries, artwork, therapy tapes, and audio recordings of voice letters to her family.
Some, while Baez was on tour in England in 1965 with Bob Dylan whom, she confesses in the doc, “broke my heart.” Prior to coming to Berlin to promote “I Am a Noise” – the first time Baez has ever attended a film festival – Baez and O’Connor spoke exclusively to Variety about the complexities of making this vivid multi-stranded visual memoir. “I Am a Noise” delves deep into your private sphere, Joan.
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