Coming to theatres tomorrow, Friday, November 27: JANIS: LITTLE GIRL BLUE
Amy Berg’s portrait of Janis Joplin made its bow at Venice earlier this year. The film has gone on to screen at Toronto, DOC NYC, Deauville, Rio, London, Warsaw, and Poland’s American Film Festival, among others.
The third of Berg’s three documentaries within the span of a year, the Oscar-nominated director’s latest presents a deeply human look at a woman who, since her death at the age of 27, has become a music legend. Avoiding overblown pronouncements of the musician’s impact, something the film’s core audience – and even the casual viewer – already knows, the film instead carefully grounds its narrative in Joplin’s warm, self-effacing personality. Employing present-day musician Cat Power to voice Joplin’s personal writings, primarily letters to her significantly more conservative Texan parents, Berg is able to convey an immediate sense of the young woman’s oscillation between vulnerability and forthrightness, and her blossoming as she embraced music, and as the American counterculture in turn embraced her. While the audience knows that Joplin’s tragic end is inevitable, the film smartly downplays any sense of impending doom to instead revel in the moment, aided immeasurably by lively archival performances that demonstrate exactly why the performer remains beloved 45 years after her death.
what (not) to doc 