Steppin' into the Screen: 'Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story'

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2025 - (NL premiere)

19:00 doors open

19:30 film starts

Melkweg, Amsterdam

TICKETS HERE

"Wednesday, September 3rd we'll be premiering this new documentary about Jackie Shane, a trans woman at a time when that term barely existed. Moreover, she was Black, which made her life in the American Deep South even more difficult. Despite these challenges, she had a successful singing career, which she gave up in 1971 for reasons that have never been clarified.

This eye-opening and absorbing documentary seeks to answer the many questions that surround her. In the 1960s, Jackie Shane refused an appearance on the insanely popular Ed Sullivan Show. Allegedly because she was only allowed to come if she dressed as a man. Shane may have been born a man, but she felt like a woman as a child and manifested herself that way all her life. She achieved success as a teenager and a big career seemed to be waiting for her in Toronto, the city she had moved to at 21 from her native Nashville. She scored hits, but in 1971 she disappeared from the public scene, to never return.

This documentary tells her story and tries to unravel the mystery with archive footage, interviews and re-enactments. Shane herself, who passed away in 2019, speaks through telephone interviews, as she did not want to be filmed."