NO ORDINARY MAN is an in-depth look at the life of musician and trans culture icon Billy Tipton. Complicated, beautiful and historically unrivaled, this groundbreaking film shows what is possible when a community collaborates to honor the legacy of an unlikely hero.
For decades, the life of American Jazz musician Billy Tipton was framed as the story of an ambitious woman passing as a man in pursuit of a music career. In No Ordinary Man, Tipton’s story is re-imagined and performed by trans artists as they collectively paint a portrait of an unlikely hero. Together, the filmmakers join Tipton’s son Billy Jr. to reckon with a complicated and contested legacy: how do you tell the story of someone who was hiding in plain sight yet desperate to be seen?
Aisling Chin-Yee is an award-winning producer, writer, and director based in Montreal, Canada, and Los Angeles, California. In 2024, she was awarded the Trailblazer Award by the Reel World Film Festival. She won the Directors Guild of Canada award for directorial achievement in a mini-series for the CBC series Plan B, starring Patrick J Adams in 2023. In 2021, Aisling was celebrated as one of DOC NYC and HBO Documentary’s 40 Under 40. New Yorker Magazine hailed Aisling’s latest film as “a genre unto itself” and one of the magazine’s Best Movies of 2021. She also won the DGC Award for Best Editing in Documentary in 2021. She was named one of Canada’s Rising Film Stars by Now Magazine in 2019 and by The Montreal Gazette in 2020, after her debut feature film, The Rest of Us, premiered at TIFF19. Aisling also produced critically acclaimed films such as Rhymes for Young Ghouls, The Saver, and Last Woman Standing.
