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After the success of her documentary, I Am a Noise, last year, Joan Baez will release her debut poetry book later this month.

On Tuesday, the music legend and activist announced that she’ll release When You See My Mother, Ask Her to Dance, an autobiographical collection of poetry, on April 30 via Godine.

Baez has written poetry for years, and shared a glimpse of some of her musings in the recent documentary, but hadn’t shared poems in book format before. In I Am a Noise, Baez looks at a...

Doclisboa festival of cinema

Recovered memories of abuse are alluded to but not explored in this often painful look back at the sensational life and career of a true icon of counterculture

The folk singer and counterculture veteran Joan Baez is the subject of this intimate and painful documentary, which brings us to the brink of a terribly traumatic revelation that it can’t quite bear to spell out.

The film follows Baez on her 2018 Fare Thee Well goodbye tour and was evidently filmed over a number of years – long enough to include an interview with a sister who has since died, and to show heart-rending footage of Baez tending to her very elderly mother who has also now gone. We see Baez storming it in venues all over the US, with starry names such as Bill and Hillary Clinton coming backstage afterwards to bask in her authentic protest prestige.

For the last 60 years, it’s been hard to see Joan Baez as anything other than a saintly figure, or certainly, at the least, a beatifically placid one. Early on in the new documentary “Joan Baez I Am a Noise,” over shots of its subject being swarmed by fans at the height of her early-‘60s success, the present-day Baez quips that much of the public came to view her like the Virgin Mary — and confesses that, with her head swelled by fame at the time, she was not much inclined to disagree. But occasional flashes of ego seem like the least of the psychological problems dogging the singer, as portrayed in a music doc that starts out as a fly-on-the-wall view of Baez’s farewell tour and ends as an extended look at family trauma and recovery from mental illness.

Launching at the Berlinale, then followed by a stop...

Sepideh Farsi’s “La Sirène” (“The Siren”) is opening the Berlin Film Festival’s Panorama strand.

The program, which comprises 35 films from 30 countries, including 28 world premieres and 11 debuts, includes new films by Patric Chiha, İlker Çatak, Frauke Finsterwalder, Maite Alberdi, Milad Alami and Apolline Traoré. They feature a galaxy of well-known protagonists and actors such as Joan Baez, Jafar Panahi, Payman Maadi, George MacKay, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Fan Bingbing, Sandra Hüller and Susanne Wolff.

Panorama Selections

“After”

by Anthony Lapia | with Louise Chevillotte, Majd Mastoura, Natalia Wiszniewska

France

World premiere | Debut film

“All the Colours of the World Are Between Black and White”

by Babatunde Apalowo | with Tope Tedela, Riyo David, Martha Ehinome Orhiere, Uchechika Elumelu, Floyd Anekwe

Nigeria

World premiere | Debut film

“And, Towards Happy Alleys”

by Sreemoyee Singh | with Jafar Panahi, Nasrin Soutodeh, Jinous Nazokkar, Farhad Kheradmand, Aida Mohammadkhani

India

World premiere | Debut film | Documentary

“La Bête dans la...

We thought all the great vintage music documentaries were accounted for, but Murray Lerner’s look at the Newport Folk Festival in the mid-‘sixties is a terrific time machine to a kindler, gentler musical era. The mix of talent is broad and deep, and we get to see excellent vintage coverage of some real legends, before the hype & marketing plague arrived.

Festival: Folk Music at Newport, 1963-1966

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 892

1967 / B&W / 1:33 flat full frame / 97 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date September 12, 2017 / 39.95

Starring: Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, Judy Collins, Donovan, Bob Dylan, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Pete Seeger, Peter Yarrow, Mary Travers, Odetta, Ronnie Gilbert, Mike Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, Theodore Bikel, Cousin Emmy, Horton Barker, Fiddler Beers, Mimi Fariña, Richard Farina, Mrs. Ollie Gilbert, Fannie Lou Hamer, Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, John Koerner, Jim Kweskin, Tex Logan, Mel Lyman, Spokes Mashiyane, Fred McDowell, Brownie McGhee, Pappy Clayton McMichen,...