Amazing Grace - Second Screenings - SPOILERISHDo you remember? The Rumor Had It that AG would have second screenings later this year -for Awards, maybe?-. Well, it seems true.
Audiences Offered Second Chance To View New Film
By ROBERT W. PLYLER
Above a scene from the film ‘‘Amazing Grace,’’ starring Ioan Gruffud and Albert Finny. The film recounts how one man’s courage caused England to abandon the slave trade more than 50 years before the U.S. Civil War.
8/12/2007 - CHAUTAUQUA — Audiences at the Chautauqua Cinema are being offered their second opportunity within a week, to see an inspiring new film, and to meet and ask questions of the filmmaker.
Monday and Tuesday, at 1 p.m., 4:30 p.m., and 8 p.m., the Chautauqua Cinema will show the film ‘‘Amazing Grace.’’ At the conclusion of each showing, the filmmaker, Ken Wales, will be present to discuss the film with the audience and to answer their questions.
Nearly everyone is familiar with the popular hymn ‘‘Amazing Grace,’’ which exists in literally hundreds of arrangements and is one of the most popular hymns ever written. Some people know that the words were written by John Newton, an Englishman who served as the captain of a slave trading ship, which brought captive Africans to America in conditions of filth and terror, to be trained for lives as slaves.
Far fewer know that Newton became the mentor to an energetic young clergyman named William Wilberforce, and that Wilberforce succeeded in getting the English parliament to first outlaw the profitable slave trade, and then to outlaw slavery itself.
The film is the story of Wilberforce’s heroic efforts, despite fierce odds, including the preaching of churches that slavery is approved by the Bible and therefore, to oppose it is evil.
We spoke with Wales by telephone, before his departure for Chautauqua.
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‘‘Amazing Grace’’ stars Ioan Gruffudd as William Wilberforce, the crusading Member of Parliament, and Albert Finney as John Newton, the former slave trader who came to write the famous hymn.
Gruffudd has made many films and television series, including ‘‘Black Hawk Down,’’ and is probably best known as the title character in the ‘‘Horatio Hornblower’’ television series.
Finney burst into the public’s notice in the late 1960s, in the title role of the film ‘‘Tom Jones,’’ and has had a long and distinguished career in films and on the British stage.
‘‘Abraham Lincoln was a great admirer of Wilberforce. I’ve heard it said that if it hadn’t been for the events shown in the film, it might have been nearly another century before the United States was free of slavery,’’ Wales said.
The Chautauqua Cinema is located beside and slightly behind Norton Hall, on the grounds of Chautauqua Institution.
http://post-journal.com/articles.asp?articleID=18505