In the 2024 documentary film Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story, the life of R&B soul singer Jackie Shane is investigated through her personal archive, creative reenactments, and archival materials. The documentary was written and directed by Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee alongside co-writer Alison Duke and was produced by Elliot Page’s new production company PageBoy Productions. The film had its world premiere at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film & TV Festival before opening in Canada. During the 1960s, Jackie Shane was the toast of Toronto, helping to create the Toronto sound that was so popular at the time. Her albums sold out all over Toronto, but in 1971, she disappeared and was never heard from again. The documentary relies on Jackie’s own collection to tell the story, through archival footage and photographs sourced by the film’s archives producer, Emma Kehayas. In 1965, Jackie Shane was on Night Train, an all-Black R&B television series, singing “Walking the Dog.” This performance, the only known archival footage of her, is shown in the documentary in stark contrast to the sound of her live album, Jackie Shane Live!, released in 1967, which is used throughout the film. The documentary’s use of the live album gives us a glimpse of how her sound shook audiences as she performed at Toronto’s Saphire Tavern. Jackie’s life was pulled back into the spotlight in 2010, when Elaine Banks wrote and produced an audio documentary for CBC’s Inside the Music called “I Got Mine: The Story of Jackie Shane. The audio story focused on Jackie’s role as a musician in Toronto, featuring contemporary artists who played with her in the 1950s and 1960s. “I Got Mine” was made before the world knew what had happened to Jackie Shane, with many of the people being interviewed believing that she was dead. An anthology album released in 2017 was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Historical Album in 2019. Grammy-winning music journalist Rob Bowman was the first to interview Jackie by phone for the liner notes, and his work represents the first written biography about Jackie. Bowman’s writing, specifically, sheds light on her career and life as a musician.Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer, named after Jackie’s hit song and with an opening chapter by Steven Maynard called “‘A New Way of Lovin’: Queer Toronto Gets Schooled by Jackie Shane,” was also published in 2017. By this time, co-directors Mabbott and Rosenberg-Lee were already in touch with Jackie, talking to her over the phone. The directors recorded the audio from their phone conversations, which took place during the final years of her life. These recordings detail how Jackie went from living as a complete recluse to getting ready to return to touring. Her untimely death in February 2019 meant that the filmmakers were unable to make the film with her; instead, they relied on reenactments (with Jackie played by American actress Sandra Caldwell in the phone conversations and by Makayla Walker on stage) and used rotoscope animation to punch colour and vibrancy into the documentary. The film traces Jackie’s life from childhood through her introduction to music to her last moments. Jackie narrates stories about her mother, her Aunt Jesse (who raised her as her own), and her grandmother (who she called “Grandmama”), while her family photographs are shown to the audience. Jackie speaks of joining a choir and eventually becoming a musician. Her collection is not just shown as digitized images: once removed from the storage unit, Jackie’s belongings are perfectly laid out on white tables in a white room, …
