Janis Ian: Breaking Silence

60 years ago the song "Society's Child" hit the scene like a sonic shockwave. Dozens of record labels refused to release it. Until Verve Records (renowned for jazz) stepped up and did the right thing. Radio stations also banned it.

The year was 1965 and America was experiencing the societal shocks of the Civil Rights movement. It was a 15 year-old slip of a girl, JANIS IAN who had unleashed an astounding song - that spoke of young love across the racial divide - that provoked such fury in some quarters, and admiration from others, including maestro Leonard Bernstein.

This is the opening sequence of an important film JANIS IAN: BREAKING SILENCE. The film's director, Varda Bar-kar (Fandango at the Wall, Big Voice) succeeds superbly in achieving the balance of Janis Ian's life story and musical journey; both the human story and the splendid music are given plenty of space to breathe.

Every meaningful song was showcased, including my favourites, "At Seventeen," "Jesse," "Stars," and "Between the Lines."

This weekend we were invited to see an early screening of the documentary at a Palm Springs Film festival. I was moved and inspired by it. And it's no wonder that in the day, Janis Ian's albums sat beside Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Carol King and Joni Mitchell in my vinyl collection.

Varda Bar-Kar, with her deft touch and directorial vision, has taken this singer/songwriter with a sublime voice and insightful and poignant pen from the shadows, and has placed Janis Ian where she belongs, besides the greatest peers of her generation.

It is fitting that this musical protege is finally acknowledged in film, on the 60th anniversary of Society's Child, and that Janis Ian's genius of American song is showcased to the world.

Please, when JANIS IAN: BREAKING SILENCE comes to a theater near you, make sure you see it 🎶

(Full declaration: I do appear on screen underscoring the significance of Janis Ian's stand for integrated audiences under apartheid South Africa.)

• a former record executive and author.

Janis Ian: Breaking the Silence is a searing portrait of a groundbreaking singer-songwriter who has long demanded closer attention. Her monster hit, "At Seventeen," is perhaps the most insightful piece of music ever written about adolescent girlhood. Not only did Ian write the deep and soulful "Society's Child" at the age of fourteen, she stood up to the major record companies and refused to change a word. Director Varda Bar-Kar fully captures the scope of Janis Ian's accomplishments, as well as her unflappable courage amid a life of profound trials and tribulations. That the film resonates so deeply is a tribute to both artists.

Varda Bar-Kar's beautifully crafted documentary of one of our time's until now too-hidden heroes is, like her earlier "Fandango at the Wall", a feast of both filmmaking and subject.

Janis Ian is nothing less than a national treasure--her songs, her singing of them, and also her life. The steadiness of Ian's compassion and the ferocity of her attention are both exemplary. Her work carries the long tradition of American narrative song into current-world context and content. From her first hit, a song about interracial dating in the 1960s, "Society's Child," to the much-covered classic "Jesse," to the fireband-bright declarations of the late-life song, "I'm Still Standing," Ian has been ground-breaker, silence breaker, truth sayer.

Anyone who's heard Ian's songs still recalls them. But only some know the lifelong body of work, and fewer still know Ian's own life story, or quite realize how much courage, from start to now, it must have taken. Bar-Kar's always-moving and always-questioning camera, mix of interviews, archival footage, animation, and reenactment gives us that life--significant and moving in itself--its pitched lows, its highs, its determinations, loves, losses.

Above all, the film gives us Ian's fidelity to what matters, her fidelity to what is (old fashioned though the thought is) right, and her fidelity to, above all, simply what is.

For a person who knows Ian's music, Breaking Silence will expand what lies around, behind, and beneath it. For those who don't (yet), the documentary stands on its own, both as introduction to the songs and as an introduction to one unexpected and sui generis person, who's spent a lifetime in the making of sense through the making of art.

As a lifelong fan of Janis Ian, I could not have asked for a more penetrating, insightful account of her life and music than filmmaker Varda Bar-Kar's JANIS IAN: BREAKING SILENCE.

Told through an artful mix of archival footage, interviews and scripted scenes, the viewer is taken into Janis' life and times in an intimate, engaging experience.

Younger audiences are likely not aware of Ian's breakout success at the age of 14 with the single SOCIETY'S CHILD, a heartfelt plea for racial equality, which caused her to be threatened and ostracized even as her fame created tremendous opportunities. Personal crises derailed her many times over the course of her stellar career, but each time she rose back up, creating such classics as AT SEVENTEEN and JESSE.

Her skill as a singer-songwriter is thoroughly portrayed, and her equally influential work as an activist for gay rights and social justice also receives its due.

This is the thoughtful, moving documentary Janis Ian has earned, and hopefully it will reach a wide and appreciative audience.