This is a review of Janis : Little Girl Blue (2015)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
16 February
This is a review of Janis : Little Girl Blue (2015)
Janis Joplin 1967 Photo Jim Marshall pic.twitter.com/0CKE3dlmBC— History in Moments (@historyinmoment) December 11, 2016
Janis Joplin with her 1965 Porsche 356C Cabriolet, 1969. pic.twitter.com/N4nFlUYxbM— History In Pictures (@HistoryInPics) September 21, 2016
Film references :
* Let’s Get Lost (1988) [Chet Baker]
* Mavis ! (2015) [Mavis Staples]
* Orion : The Man who Would be King (2015) [Jimmy Ellis]
For Janis Joplin, a woman born in January 1943 in Port Arthur, TX, to support anti-segregation was at the cost of attacks on her self-image.— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 16, 2016
One member of Joplin’s first band, Big Brother & the Holding Company, said of her that it could be seen that she had already been hurt, over and over.
Her sister put things somewhat differently, saying that going to San Francisco was an Opportunity to make your life fit your values - although Laura Joplin talked elsewhere on camera of ‘social acceptance’, her words did sound a rather negative formulation to describe what Joplin had felt that she needed to do in her life¹.
What impresses most in the film is how it has been put together. Not simply at the level of how to decide to narrate the story of Joplin's work and life, and how to allow opinions (such as Laura Joplin’s) to stand unweighted alongside those of others (and what include / what leave out), but also in terms of how the visual elements interact with the audio.
In particular, director Amy J. Berg chooses to use imagery, whose metaphorical import can proceed our actively comprehending : before we ever come to know what it relates to and means, we see pieces of footage of movement along a rail-road, and Joel Shearer’s music [IMDb (@IMDb) does not credit him, so it is as well that his name crudely noted during the credits] dares to be ambiently effective, without trying to fit her bands’ styles.
[...]
End-notes
¹ Excerpts read from letters from Joplin to her parents and vice versa (with a variety of ways of presenting them on the screen), as well as the short initial part of the film that talked of her early times at home in Port Arthur, Texas, suggested that knowledge of her promiscuity or drug-use was not going to be met with understanding, let alone without judgement.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
