Husain’s piece is striking because it seems as though it is going to gesture toward some sort of identifiable fictional or documentary-derived connotative meaning, but he wisely withholds such cues in favor of direct engagement with space—public space as well as that of the picture plane. Leona Alone takes us into a Toronto neighborhood undergoing gentrification. This progress, in terms of Husain’s shot progression, is utterly literal. In the course of the first four minutes we go from the middle of a wooded road, through a street of ranch-style homes, and eventually onto high-rise construction sites. But Husain inserts freestanding stained glass frames into the filmic scenes. Each of these colorful frames mimics the proportions of the video frame, so eventually the stained glass is flush against the cityscapes Husain captures. In fact, many of the glass works are so perfectly aligned—neon signs inside rectilinear panels, undulating skyscraper windows inside curved edgework—that they almost appear to have been crafted specifically for certain locales. Leona Alone, with its plangent but off-key, modernist string score and final sequence in a sun-blistered parking lot, is not exactly a “statement against gentrification.” Instead, it’s an inquiry into disproportionate, if not incommensurate, notions of the Beautiful, and, by extension, the Good. - Michael Sicinski,Tiff wavelength 2010, mubi.com

Cinematography IRIS NG Music JAQUES THOLLOT "CINQUE HOPS" 1978 Produced by THE LEONA DRIVE PROJECT, TORONTO

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