Amazing Grace (2018) on Netflix
G20181h 27mDocumentaryMusic
Aretha Franklin records the gospel album Amazing Grace at a Los Angeles church over two nights in January 1972. A choir and a band perform with her as she sings.
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- Netflix4.4/5
- IMDb7.5/105,514 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes99%
Trailer
Plot summary
Two consecutive nights of recording at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles in January 1972 produce Aretha Franklin's gospel album Amazing Grace. James Cleveland serves as master of ceremonies, sings and plays piano, while the Southern California Community Choir sings behind her, with Alexander Hamilton directing. Kenny Luper plays organ, Cornell Dupree guitar, Bernard Purdie drums, Chuck Rainey bass and Poncho Morales percussion. Franklin's father, C. L. Franklin, speaks, and Clara Ward sits in the audience. The performances are captured on 16 mm cameras, but the crew used no clapperboards, so the sound cannot be matched to the picture afterward, and the reels go into a vault.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Amazing Grace (2018)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Sydney Pollack shot 20 hours of 16 mm footage of Aretha Franklin's 1972 gospel recording, but because he used no clapperboards the sound was thought impossible to sync, so the project was halted and the raw footage sat in a Warner Bros. vault through the 1990s.
- Aretha Franklin won an emergency injunction against Amazing Grace in 2015, stopping planned screenings at the Telluride, Toronto and Chicago film festivals because she had not given permission to screen the footage; her family arranged its release after her death in 2018.
- Aretha Franklin's Amazing Grace album, recorded over the two nights in January 1972 that the film captures, became the highest-selling gospel album of all time.
- Producer Chiemi Karasawa filed an arbitration case against Alan Elliott when Amazing Grace was released, claiming her work on the film was not compensated.
