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Biff to feature Aretha’s Amazing Grace

How I Got Over: Rhythm and Blues singer Aretha Franklin returned to her gospel roots in 1972 to record an album, Amazing Grace, in Los Angeles, California’s Watts district’s New Temple Missionary Baptist Church, with the Southern California Community Choir (Photograph courtesy of Al’s Records And Tapes via National Public Radio)

The Queen of Soul is to feature in a documentary to be screened by the Bermuda International Film Festival next week.

Aretha Franklin recorded the album Amazing Grace at Reverend James Cleveland’s New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts, Los Angeles, in 1972. It was filmed for a documentary which has never been released until now.

The multiple Grammy winning artist was at the height of her musical powers when she recorded the album.

She was already well known in Bermuda and in 1965 performed at the airmen’s club at the US Naval Air Station and the Forty Thieves Club on Front Street. Biff said the film was a testimony to the greatness of Ms Franklin and a time-machine window into a moment in American musical and social history.

The 87-minute film is rated “G”. Amazing Grace will screen at the Speciality Cinema in Hamilton on Wednesday at 6.30pm.

Tickets are on sale at www.ptix.bm, at the cinema’s box office and will also be sold on the door if any are still available.

The film is part of the festival’s monthly series designed to showcase the best art house, foreign, documentary and independent films. Screenings are held on the first Wednesday of the month.