Janis: Little Girl Blue

Amy Berg's documentary tells Janis Joplin less through her voice on stage than through the letters she wrote home. Chan Marshall, who records as Cat Power, reads them, and that choice sets the tone: what you hear is not a legend but a young woman asking to be approved of. The childhood in Port Arthur, the exclusion she experienced at school, and her return to that same school's reunion a decade later form the spine. Some of the concert footage had not been released before. Berg neither romanticises the addiction nor offers it as the single explanation; the subject is a need for acceptance that never fills. It premiered at Venice in 2015. Who it is for: viewers who like music documentaries and the history of the sixties American stage. Who it is not for: anyone who only wants concert footage, since this is largely biography.