BY STEVE MARTINDALE
For Salt Spring Film Festival Society
Once you hear Jackie Shane sing, you’ll never forget it. The Salt Spring Film Festival’s Best of the Fests series continues with an award-winning celebration of the remarkable life and mysterious disappearance of the enormously talented but largely forgotten African-American soul singer.
Co-presented by Gulf Islands Radio and the Salt Spring Jazz and Blues Society, Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story screens at ArtSpring on Wednesday, Dec. 4.
Shane shattered barriers with raw talent, courage and an unbreakable commitment to living as her authentic self in an era when voices like hers were typically silenced and marginalized. With an outsized stage presence that eclipsed even the greatest R&B artists, Shane blazed a dazzling trail from Nashville to Montreal to the top of the charts in 1960s Toronto, where she briefly ruled the nightclub scene before suddenly and inexplicably disappearing.
Through radiant state-of-the-art animation, never-before-heard recordings and an incredible soundtrack that seals her place as one of the greatest singers of the 20th century, the full scope of this transgender diva’s extraordinary life is revealed in an unforgettable portrait of a forgotten star miraculously brought back to life on the big screen.
Directed by Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee, Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story was named Best Documentary at the recent Edmonton International Film Festival, received a Special Jury Prize from the Directors Guild of Canada at Toronto’s Hot Docs and has won Audience Awards at film festivals in Nashville and Chicago.
The Best of the Fests series continues on Dec. 11 with the astonishing documentary Us, Our Pets and the War, featuring courageous Ukrainians risking their lives to evacuate abandoned animals from the war zone, co-presented by the Salt Spring Friends of Ukraine Committee and the BC SPCA.
All screenings in the Best of the Fests series are at ArtSpring on Wednesdays at 7:30 pm. Tickets are $14 each and are available online; in advance by phone (250-537-2102) or in person when the box office is open (Tuesday to Friday from 10 am to 2 pm); or at the door starting an hour before each film.