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Business News Legal
Aretha Franklin stops 1972 concert recording from being screened, for now
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 7 September 2015
Aretha Franklin won some “respect” in the American courtroom on Friday, said every news outlet in the world this weekend, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
But whatever, the soul legend definitely won in her bid to stop the screening of on old documentary which features a concert she performed in an LA church back in 1972. For now at least.
The film, called ‘Amazing Grace’, documents Franklin recording the live gospel album of the same name, but a technical error that occurred during the making of the 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.
The film’s director, Sydney Pollack, died in 2008, while Franklin sued its producer, Alan Elliott, in 2011 in a bid to stop the documentary ever being made public. The singer said at the time: “For him to show that film, for him to completely and blatantly ignore me, would be terrible. For him to do that would encourage other people to do the same thing and have no respect for me”.
But a film festival in Colorado was nevertheless planning on showing ‘Amazing Grace’ this weekend, with three screenings in its schedule. Which resulted in Franklin filing late-in-the-day legal papers in Denver, phoning in her testimony from Detroit, in a bid to get an injunction stopping the screenings.
Franklin’s lawyers said that Pollack recorded their client’s 1972 performance on the understanding that any commercial use of the recording would be subject to the singer’s approval. Screening the film without her consent, therefore, would breach her contractual as well as intellectual property, image and privacy rights.
A legal rep for the Telluride Film Festival countered that cancelling the screenings at such short notice would damage its reputation, while adding that an insufficient number of people would see the documentary at the event to damage Franklin’s image. A 1968 contract was also presented that seemingly granted permission from the singer for the film to be used, though the judge said that agreement only related to the sound recording.
Either way, an injunction was issued banning the film from being screened, though that only lasts for fourteen days, pending more detailed legal wranglings. Meanwhile, the Toronto Film Festival also has plans to screen the movie this week, so it remains to be seen if separate last minute legal proceedings are now filed in the Canadian courts.
