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The film, shown out of competition at the Venice Film
Festival, follows Joplin, who is portrayed as being an outsider
while growing up in Port Arthur, Texas, through her meteoric
rise as the lead singer of the San Francisco-based Big Brother
and the Holding Company, to her death at age 27 from a heroin
overdose in October, 1970.
"There were many times when I wanted to do something a little
bit more creative that wasn't guided by the archive, by what
exists, and it backfired every single time," Berg told a news
conference on Sunday.
"I feel like Janis guided me through this edit. Her voice really
guided me through it."
Unlike the recent documentary "Amy" about the late British soul
singer Amy Winehouse, which made extensive use of personal
videos, Berg had to rely largely on archive materials to
reconstruct Joplin's life.
Despite that, she said there are moments in the film that even
ardent Joplin fans would not have seen or heard.
"There is 12 minutes of new footage and audio. It was
challenging," the American filmmaker said.
"There are people who have just little remnants of being on tour
with her, like there is this great reaction to her Royal Albert
Hall gig in London and she did speak to David Dalton from
Rolling Stone (magazine) often when they were on the road.
"We have excerpts from that throughout the film and there is
some footage that somebody uncovered, and beautiful silent
footage that we used."
(Reporting by Hanna Rantala; Writing by Michael Roddy; Editing
by Mark Trevelyan)
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