‘Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story’ coming to EIFF

Sold-out-shows, rising songs in the charts, and everyone knowing your name is every aspiring musician’s dream. For many artists, it can take years of hard work in the music industry to get anywhere near that status. But for some artists like Jackie Shane, that rising fame was cut abruptly short, as she mysteriously disappeared from the public eye for decades.

Originally from Nashville, Tennessee, Shane was a Black, transgender singer who crafted R&B hits. For years she was a trailblazer performing in the 1960s Toronto music scene, captivating audiences along the way. Then in 1971, she disappeared.

Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story, co-directed by Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee, is a documentary recounting her life and career. Through recorded telephone conversations with Shane and rotoscope animation, Mabbott and Rosenberg-Lee bring Shane’s story to life.

After Shane disappeared from the spotlight, there were few people that she spoke to in the years before her death in 2019. Mabbott was fortunate enough to be one of them.

“We talked every week for over a year and the conversations were on average four or five hours. [We] spoke for 11 hours straight once. It took about a year before she agreed to [the documentary], before she said ‘Yeah, let’s do it,’” Mabbott said.

The inspiration behind using rotoscope animation came from thousands of photos Shane left behind.

“The fact that she left all those pictures, it was like they tell their own story of her transition [and] of the stages. That allowed us to build the rotoscope,” Rosenberg-Lee explained.

“What she was telling us in the archive that she left was not just factual, but editorial and very personal. It was a real treasure for documentarians to find,” Mabbott said. 

Shane’s disappearance from the music scene remains a mystery

There will always be questions as to why Shane suddenly vanished from the public eye. She was dominating the Toronto music scene with lively performances. Her hit song “Any Other Way,” has over two million streams on Spotify — a number that would probably be higher if streaming existed back then.

While Shane disappeared from the public eye, the world did not forget about her. Mabbott describes how in Toronto there are murals of the singer. Her album, Jackie Shane Live, has also seen a resurgence. 

“People all over the world were rediscovering Jackie, and I think she was absolutely going to come back out and play. It’s tragic that the world was without Jackie for those 45 years. But, she was doing it on her own terms. And to her it meant not coming out into the world yet,” Mabbott said.

Though the world was devoid of Shane’s talent for decades, Mabbott and Rosenberg-Lee hope that viewers will not only be introduced to Shane, but also become inspired. 

Mabbott explained that “this is a kind of film that you can come to and her music is going to fill you with joy. She’s going to fill you with joy.”

For Rosenberg-Lee, he hopes people “[can get] inspired to be more of who they truly are. To learn about stories that have been erased and what can be discovered there.”

“I think Jackie was about being yourself [and] being authentic. And to me, I love when people take that away from the film.”

Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story will be showing at the Edmonton International Film Festival (EIFF) on October 3 and 4, with Mabbott in attendance for a Q&A.