Joan Baez: I Am a Noise

This documentary, co-directed by Karen O'Connor, Miri Navasky and Maeve O'Boyle, follows Joan Baez's career of more than sixty years and her final tour. Baez went on stage at eighteen and never separated music from politics; her friendship with Martin Luther King and her pacifism shaped her working life. What distinguishes it is the extent of the archive. The Baez family kept home recordings, letters and notes from therapy sessions for years, and all of it was opened to the film. That material makes visible the anxiety disorder and the medication behind the certainty on stage. The most contested section concerns the family's past. What Baez and her sister say about their childhood remains a matter the family has not agreed on, and the documentary leaves it open. Who it's for: those interested in folk music and the civil rights movement. Who it's not for: viewers who do not want to approach allegations of childhood abuse; the film addresses that section openly.