Joan Baez, on her father's abuse: "I don't hold a grudge against him... I have made an effort to trace empathy and what unites me with him"

• Interview Sean Penn: "There was a time when Che Guevara's shirts were changed for Charlie Manson's"

• Berlinale Paul B. Preciado drops a dazzlingly beautiful trans bombshell in the heart of the Berlinale

• Inauguration The most Spanish Berlinale starts lost with an exhausting romantic comedy

Joan Baez (New York, 1941)

wears a shirt with the Ukrainian shield, speaks very softly and smiles with metronome precision every three sentences (perhaps there were four).

Pure peace.

And yet, the documentary

(signed by Karen O'Connor, Miri Navasky and Maeve O'Boyle) tells us just the opposite.

Suddenly, we discover a woman who has been harassed since she was a child by all kinds of anxieties, fears, and even psychiatrists.

It is the first time that she openly talks about it.

And she does it hand in hand with a precious and precise visual and sound journey to the depths of her music and, more importantly, of her shared imagination.

The animations of her own drawings are simply stunning.

In an unprecedented way, she also reveals the darkest of secrets.

At one point,

Right after her, the singer herself remembers that her father got into her bed with her without needing more from her.

Be that as it may, and beyond the headline, the result is a delicate film to the extreme, almost a miniature, which gives us the perfect portrait of a myth.

His film has a lot to celebrate music as activism, as a tool for social transformation.

I think that is already a thing of the past?

What relationship do you have with the music that is being made right now? I have the impression that everything is much more dispersed now, without focus.

It is much more difficult for music to fulfill the social and political function it had before in this atmosphere.

The thinkers are isolated, the organizations each go their own way... But the good ideas, I imagine, are there.

Of course, the covid has not helped.

If we look at the United States, there is a wall of propaganda that makes it very difficult for anything smart to break through. And about music? I guess we have to wait for a new generation like Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary... Right now there is no one comparable to The Beatles.

Joan Baez in an image from the documentary 'Joan Baez I am a noise'.

Do you believe, then, that art can still change reality or that the force for mobilization invoked in your classic songs no longer makes sense? The important thing is that whatever is done crosses the border.

I'll stick with that idea: cross the border of the space that we believe to be safe. What happened to you to give yourself up to this emptying exercise that is 'I am a noise'?

Why just now? Well, I guess I didn't want to wait until I was in a wheelchair.

Not seriously.

I wrote two memoirs when I was young and to respond to everything that had happened in my life.

One I published when I was 20 years old and the other when I was forty.

Since then a lot has happened.

And, in fact, I had never talked about what I talk about in the movie.

Somehow,

there are matters that are better to take care of when some of your loved ones and your parents are no longer around.

It would hurt them a lot. This is the first time that you have spoken openly about your relationship with your father and that you and your sister were abused.

Is it possible to forgive that?

What relationship do you have with the memory of your father? Happily for me, and with a lot of work, I reached a point where there is no resentment left.

Somehow, I have come to the conclusion that my father is also a victim and that he had to go through something similar.

Otherwise, that would not have happened.

It is a generational brand.

My father must have suffered and his parents the same.

I have made an effort to trace empathy and what unites me with it.

That's how I've dealt with it.

Now I think of him as a good man.

People adored him.

Yes, as he said,

I had to wait until he wasn't around to get all the bad things out of me and face him. A good part of the film goes into explaining her psychiatric problems, problems that she dragged on as a child.

It's as if we suddenly discovered another Joan Baez.

Recently, in the same way, we have seen big stars break in public and speak clearly about the same thing, about his weaknesses.

What has changed? There are limits to everything and we have lived for too long in a society where talking about psychological problems was understood as a form of weakness.

And that is a mistake that makes us all worse.

There is nothing wrong with confessing that you are depressed or anxious.

Helping each other can't be an embarrassing or embarrassing moment, it should be the norm and it should be what defines our society.

That is why it is good to speak freely about our sufferings.

I am glad that one of the issues that is most discussed in the film, as we saw in the presentation, is precisely this.

There is a need to destigmatize mental problems. In 'I am a noise' you openly show your disappointment with Bob Dylan. Do you have any kind of relationship with him? No.

I also wanted to make peace with him.

All the resentment I could ever feel towards him disappeared.

I even wrote to him to let him know.

But without waiting for an answer.

I just wanted him to know how important he and his music had been to me. On the other hand, and as seen in the documentary, it gives the impression that he has been preparing this film for a long time.

We see that he has his whole life perfectly organized in boxes, filing cabinets... It has been a very emotional journey,

definitely.

But I watch the film and, beyond talking about me, I think it also talks about all of us and, in its own way, fulfills a function.

The work we have done dedicated to freeing myself from my demons on camera can help others do something similar.

Above all, I have made an effort to be completely honest in everything, when talking about my psychiatric problems, when talking about motherhood, about my relationship with my parents... I imagine that it is time because I have nothing to lose. film the famous images of the march on Washington with Martin Luther King in the lead and it is impossible not to think about what happened not so long ago with the death of George Floyd... The first thing that comes to mind is that everything achieved at the March on Washington is something that is part of all of us and is forever.

And yet

It's somewhat disheartening to see how we've regressed on some aspects of civil rights.

I want to imagine that it is not so much that we have gone backwards as that the course of history has slowed down.

All the difficulties we have gone through in recent years undoubtedly have an influence.

We have lived through dire times in which it has been important to fight to maintain decency.

I'm glad I was there, but there's still a lot to do.

It is unbearable to live waiting for the next black boy to be killed by the police. Do you think that leaders like Luther King are missing? Invoking leaders is dangerous.

But it is true that we all need a certain spiritual guide.

There is a lack of people to unite us.

As I said, the great problem of our days is the dispersion and isolation in which we live.

Are you disappointed? No one of my generation thought in the 60s that we would reach the terrible situation we live in now.

Although, it is true that small victories are experienced.

I think of what we have experienced in my country with the repeal of the right to abortion.

Who would have thought that something like this could happen? What keeps you awake at the moment? It depends on the night.

In addition to some of the issues that I have already mentioned, I am especially concerned about global warming, the loss of biodiversity... Where before there were a hundred birds, now only one is heard.

Who would have thought that something like this could happen? What keeps you awake at the moment? It depends on the night.

In addition to some of the issues that I have already mentioned, I am especially concerned about global warming, the loss of biodiversity... Where before there were a hundred birds, now only one is heard.

Who would have thought that something like this could happen? What keeps you awake at the moment? It depends on the night.

In addition to some of the issues that I have already mentioned, I am especially concerned about global warming, the loss of biodiversity... Where before there were a hundred birds, now only one is heard.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

• Bob Dylan

• George Floyd

• USA

• coronavirus

• Ukraine

• NY

• Covid 19

• cinema

• berlin festival