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Joan Baez I Am A Noise

Directors

Miri Navasky, Maeve O'Boyle, Karen O'Connor

Executive Producers

Greg Sarris, Patti Smith, Terri Press, Josh Braun

Producers

Karen O'Connor, Miri Navasky

Editors

Maeve O'Boyle

Cinematographers

Wolfgang Held, Ben McCoy, Tim Grucza

I Am A Noise is an unusually intimate psychological portrait of legendary folk singer and activist Joan Baez. Neither a conventional biopic nor a traditional concert film, this immersive documentary is a visual memoir that follows Baez on her farewell tour as she comes to the end of a sixty-year career. Moving back and forth through time, the film brings the past to life through her extraordinary archive, including newly discovered home movies, diaries, artwork, therapy tapes, and audio recordings. Throughout the film, Baez is remarkably revealing about her life on and off stage – from her lifelong emotional struggles to her civil rights work with Martin Luther King Jr. to a heartbreaking romance with a young Bob Dylan. A searingly honest look at a living legend, this film is a deeply personal exploration of an iconic artist who has never told the full truth of her life, as she experienced it, until now.

JoanBaez_M.Navasky

Miri Navasky

Co-Director, Joan Baez I Am A Noise

Miri Navasky is an award-winning filmmaker who co-founded Mead Street Films with Karen O’Connor more than two decades ago. Her films include, The Killer at Thurston High, an investigation of a school shooting that won a Banff Award; the Emmy-nominated The New Asylums, a wrenching portrait of mentally ill prisoners that won the Robert F. Kennedy Grand Prize Journalism Award; The Undertaking, an Emmy award-winning film that follows poet-undertaker Thomas Lynch as he explores mortality and grief in a small Michigan town; The Suicide Plan, an Emmy-nominated film that delves into the hidden world of assisted suicide; and Growing Up Trans, an intimate exploration of the struggles and choices facing transgender children and their parents that was nominated for an Emmy, short-listed for a Peabody, and won a DuPont Columbia award.

DC-DOX-Karen-OConnor

Karen O'Connor

Co-Director, Joan Baez I Am A Noise

Karen O’Connor is an award-winning filmmaker. Her films, produced, written, and directed with Miri Navasky, include The Killer at Thurston High, an investigation of a school shooting that won a Banff Award; The Suicide Plan, an Emmy-nominated film that delves into the hidden world of assisted suicide; the Emmy-nominated The New Asylums, a wrenching portrait of mentally ill prisoners, which won the Robert F. Kennedy Grand Prize Journalism Award; the Emmy award-winning The Undertaking, a moving exploration of mortality and grief told through the perspective of renowned poet-undertaker Thomas Lynch; and the Emmy-nominated Growing Up Trans, a powerful and personal exploration of the struggles and choices facing transgender children, and their parents, which was shortlisted for a Peabody Award and won a DuPont Columbia Award.

JoanBaez_M.O-Boyle

Maeve O'Boyle

Co-Director, Joan Baez I Am A Noise

Maeve O’Boyle is an Emmy-award-winning filmmaker. She edited The Education of Mohammad Hussein, (HBO) which was shortlisted for an Academy Award. She co-produced and edited the Emmy-award-winning and 2014 IRE Award-winning, Firestone and the Warlord (PBS). She also edited and co-produced Growing Up Trans (PBS) with Karen O’Connor and Miri Navasky, which won a duPont Columbia award. She co-wrote and edited 112 Weddings for Doug Block, which premiered at Full Frame, Hot Docs, and Sheffield Doc/Fest and aired on HBO and BBC Storyville, and Do I Sound Gay? for David Thorpe, which had its world premiere at TIFF and was awarded the runner up for People’s Choice Award. Other work includes Left of the Dial (HBO), Heat (PBS), Carrier (PBS), and The Kids Grow Up (HBO), which premiered at IDFA and Full Frame and was awarded a special Jury prize at AFI Docs. In 2020, she directed, produced, and edited The 8th which was critically acclaimed in the UK and Ireland and nominated for an IFTA for Best Documentary. She is currently editing a feature documentary, The Animated Mind of Oliver Sacks.