Kino/ Sunday Soul #3 Any Other Way – The Jackie Shane Story at Nia Centre
Tom Grieve, Cinema EditorBook now
Kino/ Sunday Soul #3 Any Other Way - The Jackie Shane Story
Always double check opening hours with the venue before making a special visit.
Delivered as part of their 20th Anniversary, Kino’s Soul Sunday events continue this October with Any Other Way – The Jackie Shane Story at Manchester’s Nia Centre. The event features six hours of Northern Soul DJs, plus an exclusive screening of the 2024 documentary which presents the story of Jackie Shane, a groundbreaking, black transgender soul singer.
Directors Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee track the story of Page from her native Nashville to the top of the charts in 1960s Toronto, where she became an icon of the local nightclub scene owing to an outsized stage presence, which Kino compare to the likes of Etta James and Little Richard. Her story involves secrets, love and loss, but also sees her standing up to the mob and telling off television host Ed Sullivan.
Unable to film new interviews in person, and with a lack of archive footage, the directors opt to tell Shane’s story largely through rotoscope animation
The film picks up with Shane some 40-years after she disappeared from public view, utilising audio telephone calls that Mabbott conducted with the singer in the months before her death in 2019. Unable to film new interviews in person, and with a lack of archive footage, the directors opt to tell Shane’s story largely through rotoscope animation generated through performances from contemporary drag star Makayla Couture.
Counting actor Elliot Page among its Executive Producers, Any Other Way – The Jackie Shane Story delivers, with warmth and humour, an unexpected window into life in the Jim Crow-era American South, and life as a pioneering Black trans performer in the 1960s music industry.
