Film sheds light on Joplin's life

Janis Joplin.

Back when rock 'n' roll was still a new adventure, Janis Joplin proved it wasn't just for the boys.

The big-voiced, bluesy singer dominated the stage, forged her own path and paved the way for female singers to come.

But 45 years after her death from a drug overdose in 1970, music is still "a very male-dominated industry", said Amy Berg, director of the new documentary Janis: Little Girl Blue.

Berg's film includes on-screen interviews with Joplin's ex-bandmates and other 1960s musicians - almost all of them male. She says several female performers of the era turned her down, including former Jefferson Airplane singer Grace Slick.

"Grace Slick did not think that people wanted to see her how she looks today, because she was such a beautiful pop star in her 20s," Berg said at the Venice Film Festival, where Janis had its world premiere this week. "That's kind of tragic, I think. I really wanted to get that female perspective."

Fortunately, there is a female voice at the heart of Janis - Joplin's own. The documentary features some of the singer's best-known performances - including her breakout set at the Monterey Pop festival in 1967 and her woozy appearance at Woodstock two years later - as well as a previously unseen version of her biggest hit, Me and Bobby McGee.

And Berg builds the movie around letters Joplin (pictured below) wrote to her parents back in Port Arthur, Texas, chronicling her quest to find both musical success and love. Read by singer-songwriter Chan Marshall, they are by turns excited, proud and poignantly insecure.

"If you watch Janis, you see this woman who just seems fearless, and then you read these letters and it's such a different persona," said Berg. "You see this very vulnerable, raw woman seeking validation."

Made with the approval of Joplin's siblings, the film traces her talent and her troubles back to Port Arthur, a hometown where she never felt at home. AP