"It was a very tedious and long process. Initially they tried, and they only got through about 20 feet of film and they gave up," Franklin's niece and the executor of her estate, Sabrina Owens, tells NPR. "And so it ended up on somebody's cutting floor somewhere for years for decades, actually."
Sabrina Owens says that such moments reveal an intimate facet of the resplendent Queen of Soul. "I think that seeing her in this setting helps them to understand Aretha as a person," she says. "She came from the church. She is a daughter of the church. Her faith was so strong and she just loved gosp
