Winner, DGC Special Jury Prize – Canadian Feature Documentary
Top 20 Audience Favourite
Once you’ve heard Jackie Shane sing, you’ll never forget it. Yet, after shattering barriers as one of pop music’s first Black trans performers, this trail-blazing icon vanished from the spotlight at the height of her fame. From modest beginnings in Nashville, Shane soon recognized her talents and, in her late teens, made her way to Boston and Montreal, working the nightclub circuit while taking the stage with Frank Motley, a musician known for playing two trumpets at once. Her arrival in Toronto during its 1960s music explosion made her a highly sought-after headlining act who seemed destined to take her place among the R&B stars of the era. Blending her music with never-released phone conversations and soulful animated re-enactments, Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story brings Shane back to life in her own words, finally providing the recognition she so rightly deserves and introducing her to a generation fighting for their right to be their true selves.
Jukedocs curator Niko Stratis on Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story:
There is a world where Jackie Shane is a superstar, her very name the reason for marquees and bright lights, and all you need is to hear her voice and understand the why of all creation. This is not the whole truth of our world, but it is the dream explored in Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story. This woman who thrived at the spotlight of creation, a Black trans woman and soul pioneer whose presence can be felt in all that came after, who had to hide so much of herself that she disappeared from the stage just as quickly as she found it. As Miss Jackie Shane herself says in an unearthed note “I was born, but never lived.” I love that this documentary exists, that it allows her to live now and forever, and tells a story that everyone needs to hear.
