New film charts short life and long legacy of Janis Joplin

[...] 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:

"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 during an interview at the Venice Film Festival, where "Janis" had its world premiere this week.

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."

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, who received an Oscar nomination in 2007 for clerical sex-abuse documentary "Deliver Us From Evil.

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.

Both singers fought unhappiness with drinking and drugs, and both are members of the macabre "27 Club" of musicians who died at that age, alongside Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones and Kurt Cobain.