Joan Baez - I Am A Noise

A documentary by Karen O'Connor, Miri Navasky, Maeve O'Boyle
with Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, Bob Dylan, David Harris
USA 2023

Since her debut at the age of 18, musician, civil rights campaigner and activist Joan Baez has been on stage for over 60 years. For the now 82-year-old, the personal has always been political, and her friendship with Martin Luther King and her pacifism have shaped her commitment. In this biography that opens with her farewell tour, Baez takes stock in an unsparing fashion and confronts sometimes painful memories. She not only shares her successes but also speaks openly about long-standing psychological problems and therapies, about family, drugs, ageing and questions of guilt and forgiveness. She makes it clear that, during her relationship with the very young Bob Dylan, she used her celebrity to launch his career. Her disappointment at her later estrangement from him becomes palpable.

Thanks to a long-term friendship with one of the film's directors, Karen O'Connor, Baez granted the directing trio access to the «inner demons» that have plagued her since youth. Their film interweaves diary entries and a wealth of partly previously unseen archive material with extensive conversations with Baez, as well as backstage moments from the tour. An intimate portrait that will not only be of interest to her fans.

Alamode Film
Languages English, Deutsch Subtitles deutsch
Length 108 min. Format 1.78:1 – 16/9, b/w & colour Sound DD 5.1 Age 12 Zone 2 – PAL
Extras Trailer