Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story | |
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Directed by | Michael Mabbott Lucah Rosenberg-Lee |
Written by | Michael Mabbott Lucah Rosenberg-Lee Alison Duke |
Produced by | Amanda Burt Sam Dunn Michael Mabbott Scot McFadyen Justine Pimlott |
Starring | Jackie Shane |
Cinematography | Adam Crosby |
Edited by | Mike Munn |
Music by | Murray Lightburn |
Production companies | |
Distributed by | National Film Board of Canada |
Release date |
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Running time | 99 minutes |
Country | Canada |
Language | English |
Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story is a 2024 Canadian documentary film, directed by Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee. [1] The film is a portrait of Jackie Shane, the pioneering transgender singer who was a prominent figure in the Toronto music scene in the 1960s before virtually disappearing from public life after 1971. [2]
The film was based in large part on telephone interviews that Mabbott conducted with Shane over the year before her death in 2019. [1] As her death precluded the ability to videotape any new interviews in person, and very little video footage of Shane from the 1960s survives, the producers depict her in the film through the use of animation, generated by superimposing photos of Shane over rotoscoped footage of contemporary drag performer Makayla Couture. [3]
Production on the film was announced in 2022. [4]
The film premiered at the 2024 SXSW festival. [5]
It had its Canadian premiere at the 2024 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, [6] and was screened as the closing film of the 2024 DOXA Documentary Film Festival. [7]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , 100% of 12 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.5/10. [8]
In a positive review, Dennis Harvey of Variety wrote, "Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee's documentary Any Other Way combines archival materials, interviews and animated reenactments into a compelling investigation of an elusive life, as well as a talent so striking you'll be amazed it remained forgotten for so long." [9]
At Hot Docs, the film was awarded the DGC Ontario Special Jury Prize from the Best Canadian Feature Documentary award jury. [10] At Frameline, the film won the Out In The Silence Award, which is given to an outstanding film project that highlights brave acts of LGBTQ+ visibility in places where such acts are not common. [11]
The film was named as a finalist for the Rogers Best Canadian Documentary Award at the Toronto Film Critics Association Awards 2024. [12]
Murray A. Lightburn is a Canadian musician and composer, best known as the lead vocalist and principal songwriter for The Dears.
The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is the largest documentary festival in North America. The event takes place annually in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The 27th edition of the festival took place online throughout May and June 2020. In addition to the annual festival, Hot Docs owns and operates the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema, administers multiple production funds, and runs year-round screening programs including Doc Soup and Hot Docs Showcase.
Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah is a 2015 documentary-short film exploring the life and work of French director Claude Lanzmann. The film was written, directed, and produced by British filmmaker and journalist Adam Benzine.
Jackie Shane was an American soul and rhythm and blues singer, who was most prominent in the local music scene of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in the 1960s. Considered to be a pioneer transgender performer, she was a contributor to the Toronto Sound and is best known for the single "Any Other Way", which was a regional Top 10 hit in Toronto in 1963 and a modest national chart hit across Canada in 1967, reaching number 68.
Justine Pimlott is a Canadian documentary filmmaker, and co-founder of Red Queen Productions with Maya Gallus. She began her career apprenticing as a sound recordist with Studio D, the women’s studio at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), in Montreal. As a documentary filmmaker, her work has won numerous awards, including Best Social Issue Documentary at Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival and Best Canadian Film at Inside Out Film and Video Festival for Laugh in the Dark, which critic Thomas Waugh described, in The Romance of Transgression in Canada as "one of the most effective and affecting elegies in Canadian queer cinema." Her films have screened internationally at Sheffield Doc/Fest, SEOUL International Women’s Film Festival, Women Make Waves (Taiwan), This Human World Film Festival (Vienna), Singapore International Film Festival, among others, and have been broadcast around the world.
Michael Mabbott is a Canadian film and television director and writer. He is best known for his debut feature film as a director, The Life and Hard Times of Guy Terrifico, which won the Toronto International Film Festival Award for Best Canadian First Feature Film at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival.
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The Hot Docs Audience Awards are annual film awards, presented by the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival to the most popular films as voted by festival audiences. There are currently two awards presented: the Hot Docs Audience Award, presented since 2001 to the most popular film overall regardless of nationality, and the Rogers Audience Award, presented since 2017 to the most popular Canadian film.
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Alison Duke is a Canadian film director, producer, and writer. She is the co-founder and director of Oya Media.
The Hot Docs Award for Best Canadian Feature Documentary is an annual Canadian film award, presented by the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival to the film selected by jury members as the year's best Canadian feature film in the festival program. The award was presented for the first time in 1998; prior to that year, awards were presented in various genre categories, but no special distinction for Canadian films was presented. The award is sponsored by the Documentary Organization of Canada and Telefilm Canada, and carries a cash prize of $10,000.
Kathleen Jayme is a Canadian documentary filmmaker from Vancouver, British Columbia. She is most noted for the films Finding Big Country and The Grizzlie Truth, which examine the history of the ill-fated Vancouver Grizzlies of the National Basketball Association.
The Betty Youson Award for Best Canadian Short Documentary is a Canadian award, presented annually by the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival to honour a film judged as the best Canadian short documentary film in that year's festival program. The award comes with a $3,000 prize from festival sponsors John and Betty Youson.
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