This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Legal
Aretha Franklin files new litigation in bid to stop ‘Amazing Grace’ screenings
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 14 September 2015
Aretha Franklin continues in her legal battle to stop a film documenting her recording the live album ‘Amazing Grace’ in 1972 from ever being screened. Having stopped a screening at a US film festival at the last minute earlier this month, she subsequently halted separate plans to show the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival last week.
As previously reported, a technical error that occurred during the making of the 1972 documentary meant that the sound was never synchronised with the image, resulting in a silent movie that sat in a vault unseen until being completed only recently.
Franklin went legal against the film’s producer Alan Elliott a few years back in a bid to stop the movie ever being shown, while the late-in-the-day legal filing to halt that screening at the recent Telluride Film Festival claimed that, as a result of an agreement made at the time her live performance was actually filmed, the singer’s approval is now needed to show or commercialise the picture.
Franklin has now filed new legal proceedings against Elliott, in which her lawyers claim the producer showed the finished version of ‘Amazing Grace’ to film industry buyers in Toronto last week, even after the public screenings were axed. This, the new legal papers allege, “violates Ms Franklin’s contractual and statutory rights, her rights to use and control her name and likeness, and represents an invasion of her privacy”.
Elsewhere in the new legal filing, Franklin’s people want court confirmation that ‘Amazing Grace’ cannot be shown anywhere without their client’s approval, while seeking a permanent injunction to stop Elliott, or any associate of his, from further screening or distributing the film.
