Toronto’s head documentary programmer has expressed surprise over the court ruling that led to the withdrawal from the festival of the Aretha Franklin documentary Amazing Grace, saying, “I was left wondering what the judge was smoking.”
Thom Powers worked behind the scenes for four years to bring Amazing Grace to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) after it looked like the producers were resolving the inevitable technical and rights issues that have kept the late Sydney Pollack’s film out of public view for more than four decades.
However what Powers had not anticipated was last Friday’s decision by Colorado judge John Kane to grant Franklin an injunction after the soul diva filed papers to say she never granted permission for commercial use of footage from the 1972 Los Angeles church concert.
That ruling blocked the film’s world premiere in Telluride and while there is no such ruling in Canada, producer Alan Elliot felt it prudent to pull the film.
“As a lay person I was left wondering what the judge was smoking,” said Powers. “But in Colorado I guess that could be anything.”
Powers said it was his understanding Franklin had previously professed her love for the film. He could not recall a similar case in his ten years at TIFF where a film had been pulled by producers after being accepted into the festival.
“It’s a very worrying precedent,” he said. “I think of films like Alex Gibney’s Lance Armstrong or Eliot Spitzer documentaries — would those films be dependent on the full permission of their subjects? If someone did a film about Bill Cosby is that going to require Bill Cosby’s full permission?”
Powers added that while the decision to pull Amazing Grace was disappointing he had sympathy for the producers, with whom he checked in every year since he saw the film in 2011 to see if there was a chance of securing a festival screening.
“Finally this year it felt there was the right momentum behind it to solve some of the tangled knots and WME [Global, the film’s representatives] stepped up in a bigger way.”
He added that WME Global, with whom he had been in daily communication over the past week or so in a bid to ensure three ultimately doomed Toronto screenings of Amazing Grace would go ahead, would continue to seek a way for the film to screen publicly.
“Negotiations are ongoing. They could not reach a conclusion in time for us, but it is my hope the partners will keep working on it and find some happy outcome so the world can see this film.”
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