Movie review: Mystery wrapped in a challenge with a great beat

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This article was published 26/07/2024 (787 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Jackie Shane was a rising R&B star in Toronto in the early 1960s who seemed to fight for every inch of fame, despite a raging talent.

Then, in 1971, Shane apparently disappeared amid rumours of suicide or homicide.

The feature documentary Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story unravels the mystery.

Fitting for a subject whose life was filled with challenges, the making of the film was a considerable challenge itself.

You can see for yourself. Any Other Way will be screening today at 8 p.m. at the Gimli International Film Festival at the Gimli Unitarian Church, before taking a berth at the Dave Barber Cinematheque commencing Sept. 4.

For the Gimli screening, producer Justine Pimlott will be in attendance.

It is a homecoming for Pimlott, who was born in England but moved to Winnipeg as a child with her father, mother and three siblings when her dad got a job with Manitoba Hydro.

The proudly queer producer got her start in the early ’80s organizing an ambitious festival in Winnipeg called Film Furies, the first international women’s film festival, featuring female directors from Canada (Léa Pool, Anne Wheeler) and beyond (Margarethe von Trotta, Lizzie Borden).

“It was totally independent. I just set out on my own initiative,” Pimlott recalls in a phone interview.

“I raised all this money from different organizations to help with the costs. Basically, it broke even. One person who gave me tons of advice and helped me was the wonderful Dave Barber at the Winnipeg Film Group.”

Pimlott demonstrated organizational skills that would serve her well as a producer in the National Film Board’s Central Documentary Unit after she set out for Montreal to learn about filmmaking.

She ultimately landed in Toronto, where she has resided for the past three decades. It was there Pimlott learned about Jackie Shane, an R&B singer whose career was established as an in-house entertainer in the Saphire Tavern on the corner of Richmond and Victoria streets.

A friend and colleague of the more famous singer Little Richard, Shane was likewise willing to push the envelope of outlaw sexuality on stage, only more so.

Born a boy in the humble environs of Nashville, Tenn., Shane used masculine pronouns when writing press releases. But years after hitting the Toronto pop charts with the song Any Other Way, Shane returned to the United States to live the rest of her days as a woman, dying in Nashville in 2019 at the age of 78.

In short, Jackie Shane was trans before the word ever entered the popular lexicon, and therein lies the importance of the story for Pimlott.

“We’re in a time, if you look at all the number of anti-trans bills being passed or trying to be passed, if you look at the climate we’re living in now, Jackie’s story is even more important,” Pimlott says.

“It’s even more urgent for people to see it, to be exposed to a story of this extraordinary individual, an extraordinary pioneer whose whole life was an act of resistance to the status quo.”

Pimlott recognized that fact years earlier and jumped through hoops to try to get Shane to tell her story before she died.

“I had heard about Jackie from people I knew, musicologists and folks who were just huge music fans. I started to read about her. I listened to her music. And I felt this story was extraordinary, so I tried to make contact with her and to build a relationship with her to see if she would be interested in the NFB being able to tell her story in a documentary,” she says.

Pimlott reached out to music historian Rob Bowman — who interviewed Shane for liner notes for a rerelease of her music — who put her in touch with a person in England who had her contact information. Pimlott had to write a pitch before being given Shane’s phone number.

“I said, ‘Hi, Jackie, it’s Justine Pimlott’ … and she hung up on me. Oh no, I guess I blew it,” she says.

Pimlott called back and ultimately spoke with Shane many times over a period of months. It was Shane who told her she was also entertaining an offer from filmmaker Michael Mabbott, who would go on to co-direct the film with Lucah Rosenberg-Lee.

When it looked like the film was going to be a reality with Shane’s full co-operation, Shane died suddenly in 2019.

“On my end, I put the project on hold and tried to figure out what the next steps were,” Pimlott says.

Mabbott coincidentally approached the NFB for help getting the film off the ground. He had hours of taped interviews with Shane that would help build the narrative.

Of course, there were additional challenges, including the fact there was very little film footage of Shane in performance. (She had rejected appearances on both The Ed Sullivan Show and American Bandstand, the former because they asked Shane to compromise her gender-bending style, the latter because the show had little to no black representation in the audience.)

The solution was to re-create Jackie’s performances and interview clips using rotoscope animation featuring contemporary trans performers.

“We really worked together to build a team, a community behind the camera from the LGBTQ+ community and the trans community as well,” Pimlott says.

“It was a creative gift. Of course, we would love to see Jackie, but it was a creative solution that is beautiful.”

“It’s a universal story there that asks: Who is your authentic self? Are you living your life being your authentic self?”

fparts@freepress.mb.ca