Montreal is known as a 24-hour city. The metropolis shines brightest in the shadows.

The two decades between 1960 and 1980 saw nightlife explode with cultural hubs like social and dance clubs that welcomed and nurtured bohemian subcultures. At the same time, the city became a destination, attracting immigrants from around the world with a cosmopolitan atmosphere supported by bilingualism and multiculturalism. Particularly the Plateau and Mile End neighbourhoods assumed an international character, an island within the island.

The Montreal-based artist and filmmaker Jennifer Alleyn came of age in this milieu.

“This was my ‘hood,” Alleyn tells me as we sit beneath a staircase on the patio at Café Myriade on St. Denis, escaping the blazing sunshine of an early summer afternoon. “I grew up in this neighbourhood. There was Warshaw, there was Schwartz, there was a Polish bakery, there was a Greek shoe repair, there was the Hungarian meat place. When I was a kid, I believed that everybody came from elsewhere.”

The street bustles and buzzes with midday traffic and extrovert energy. But Alleyn’s latest film, Kairos, is a more introverted and contemplative affair. Kairos tells the story of Emmanuel, portrayed by the actor and playwright Emmanuel Schwartz, a fictionalized version of an actor amidst a midlife crisis who finally lands a gig hosting a late-night talk radio show and establishes unexpected connections with the callers who tune in nightly.

“We were looking for places that were a bit more deserted,” Alleyn explains of the Montreal locations that populate the film. “Those tiny lights that are not in the midst of the noise of the day. Even the visual noise. I adore the silence,” she says, “the quiet of night.”

Nocturnal reveries are effectively supporting characters in Kairos. The film lingers on beautifully framed Antonioni-esque architectural cinematography and delicate drone panoramas of apartment exteriors with a nod to Hitchcock’s Rear Window. Kairos constructs a dream-like version of Montreal that doesn’t quite fit together, allowing the viewer to fill in real and imaginary spaces: the Farine Five Roses sign; the rooftop studio in the Cooper building on St. Laurent Boulevard just below Duluth; the tiny cafe in the lobby of 10 Avenue des Pins.

Via email, I reach Emmanuel Schwartz, who explains, “The Montreal of this movie feels like a cross between Leonard Cohen’s, Amir Kadir’s, and Kim Thúy’s Montreal. The great thing about a city, about identity, is that it’s always becoming, isn’t it? That’s what’s beautiful about this place,” says Schwartz, “that we are free to change, to be a whole bunch of things, some we can’t even name.”

Conceived during the depths of the pandemic, with Schwartz in mind as the lead, Kairos captures and communicates urban alienation and longing for connection that characterizes life in post-modern cities — particularly Montreal, which is traditionally described as a pas de deux of two solitudes. “We really have something like a twin mind,” Alleyn says of Schwartz.

The movie version of Emmanuel curiously finds companionship in the disembodied telephonic voices, people from elsewhere, who tell their stories with an intimacy that can only be achieved over the phone.

“He’s seeking exchanges, real exchanges,” Alleyn tells me. “The technological society tends to erase these conversations because it’s such a capitalist way of interacting, in a way. To me, there is such a connection with the voice. It’s a heart-to-heart. It relieves all the possible preconceived images that we can build when we meet a stranger. It is direct access to a human being.”

That experiential access transcends language, nationality, and identity. Radio, too, plays a role that harkens back to a kind of social media that existed before the internet, paradoxically fostering a closer form of community. “All the walls fall,” says Alleyn, “all the preconceived walls fall through the radio.”

Alleyn is the daughter of Edmund Alleyn, the celebrated Quebec visual artist known for experimenting with form and mixing various media, incorporating abstraction and technology, and often using his works to commentate on the radical transformations Quebec society underwent following the Quiet Revolution. Coming of age to an extent in her famous father’s shadow, Alleyn more deliberately cultivated her confidence and unique creative voice.

“It’s true that it was very rich to witness the arts in the making,” Alleyn recalls. “But my father was a very strong figure. When I was young, it was very impressive. People tend to think that this could have opened up the possibility for me more than someone who has a doctor or a mechanic for a father. He really was a confirmed artist. He had a vocation. At 14 he did paintings and was like, ‘this is my life. This is what I’m meant to do.’ And it was clear, and it came from the sky. For me, to believe that I could also have this artistic capacity or sensibility, it took me a lot of time because it’s a really big thing to confront. I was a shy child.”

Jennifer Alleyn found that photography offered a way into making images that were not immediately associated or compared with her father’s. “I had my little camera when I was 10,” remembers Alleyn. “I see better behind my camera. I go closer to people with my camera. Cinema is my territory.”

She became renowned first as a documentary filmmaker with My Father’s Studio in 2007, a touching portrait of Edmund that received the prestigious Gémeaux Award and was named best Canadian film at Montreal’s International Festival of Films on Art. Her preceding film, Svanok, based upon a dream her father recounted to her, won a more meaningful award: his approval. “I did it with a tiny crew,” says Alleyn, a broad smile emerging on her face. “And when he saw it, he was really happy. And he said, ‘this is cinema.’”

We talk at length about the differences between cinema and photography. “I don’t like the word ‘shooting,’” Alleyn proclaims. “You’re killing time when you’re shooting. Cinema is about immorality. That’s why long takes are so wonderful. Then, you really have encapsulated time. That’s what makes cinema very alive. It’s true that cinema is most powerful when time becomes alive again.” She pauses and proclaims, “It is something that you retrieve from the terrible bulldozer of time.”

This image sticks with me: time as bulldozer, indiscriminately razing all of human experience, and the camera and its operator trying desperately to preserve some semblance of it. It is a delightful metaphor. The Greek word “Kairos” is distinct from “Chronos,” chronological time that unfolds linearly. Kairos means seizing upon decisive moments, those windows of opportunity that present themselves within time’s relentless march.

The sunlight creeps around the staircase that Alleyn and I sit beneath, chasing the shadows.

“You save some moments,” she contends, “and you can survive time.”◼︎

_{Cover image: Jennifer Alleyn photographed by Justine Latour.}