AMAZING GRACE, A Long Delayed Aretha Franklin Film surfaces at Berlin '69

Alex Deleon,   <filmfestivals.com>

Forced myself this morning to get to FSP  (Friedrichstadt Palast) a miserable outlying outpost of the festival, at 9:30 Am, to see the 

Long delayed doc on Aretha Franklin's Gospel concert of 1971, entitled "Amazing Grace". 

Afro American Gospel culture is a reflection of all that is most primitive in African culture but, if you can suspend the adoration of Jesus aspects, it is incredibly uplifting and Aretha was surely one of the all time  great American vocalists of any hue or color.  Even the ante meridian German audience I watched it with was moved to a long enthusiastic ovation at the end and I left the vast auditorium floating on air.  It was far more than a film. It was a profound experience.   With an amazing singer like Aretha Franklin belting out the emotions full blast there is no resisting Gospel. In some songs she accompanies herself on the piano. In others she is backed up by a solid Gospel chorus. In all of her songs she casts a spell that could raise the dead.  In a most touching sequence Aretha's father, a well known baptist minister,  takes the stage to reflect briefly on her as a gifted child performer singing in his church and calls her not only his daughter but his best friend.

Technically, this was a two night Aretha recording session before a closed audience, almost entirely black, made when she was at the top of her Rock n Roll fame.  It was originally directed by a youngish Sydney Pollock who is himself, seen in several scenes, but for technical reasons never finished or released until now, resurrected and repolished by Musician Alan ElliotI.  I knew Aretha mainly from her hit songs of the sixties such as Respect, (Sock it to me), and Natural Woman, but saw her now as a soulfully beautiful brown skinned goddess come to earth in America.  This film socked it to me more than any other all week long here in Berlin and I was in a state of uplifted ecstatic Grace at the end.

Ps: Aretha Franklin can also be seen on film doing a parody of herself in The Blues Brothers, 1980.

Alex, Berlin, 

Feb. 16, 2019