Joan Baez: I Am a Noise

“Everyone has three lives: the public, the private and the secret.” A quote from Gabriel García Márquez makes a fitting opening for this film about the iconic singer Joan Baez. Much is already known about her public and private life: her meteoric breakthrough at the age of 18 in 1959, her relationship with Bob Dylan, her involvement in the civil rights movement, and her protest against the Vietnam War.

Joan Baez: I Am a Noise follows the singer on her farewell tour through the US and Europe, bringing this past to life with unique archive footage. Baez also talks frankly about the unknown, darker sides of her life. She may have looked confident on stage, but in reality she was suffering from panic attacks and mental instability. The harmonious image of the family in which she grew up is also shattered.

Diaries, drawings, letters, and cassette tapes with recordings of therapy sessions, all from the family archive, evoke an image of a family that was unhappy in many respects. Baez talks candidly about the causes, and in doing so, the film goes beyond the standard film portrait of a celebrity.