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‘Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story’ Review: Solving The Mystery of a 1960s R&B Talent
The transgender subject of Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee’s absorbing documentary was a rising soul music star … who vanished into thin air.
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. In one of many excerpts from telephone interviews made just before her demise a few years ago, she recalls soul luminary Joe Tex advising to “get out of the South … you’ll never become who you could become here.” She duly hit the road as part of an R&B venue whose tent traveled with a carnival. (Petula Clark was right: In the mid-’60s, it really did look like “Things will be great when you’re downtown.”) They literally illustrate Shane’s sometimes specific, sometimes vague reminiscences with impressionistic scenes shot live-action, then animated by Luca Tarantini and Jared Raab in a painterly style that lends “Any Other Way” considerable aesthetic richness.
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