Roy Cross
photo by Michael Wees
Roy Cross, MFA
- Professor (Film Production), Cinema
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Sign in to editResearch areas: fiction,script writing, cinema, black and white, 35mm, 16mm, silent films, sound design, portraiture, storytelling, cinematography, old/new, low budget processes, independent films, feature films, short films, non-toxic, sustainable film processing, labcaf
Contact information
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Biography
Education
- BFA, Film and Video Production, University of Regina, 1990
- MFA, Studio Arts (Film Production), Concordia University, 1998
Biography
Professor Roy Cross teaches in the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. He studied for his undergraduate degree at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan, and received his MFA from Concordia University. His feature film So Faraway and Blue, commercially released in Canada, was warmly compared to the work of Leonard Cohen by many critics and reviewers. He has also received industry funding from three provincial funding bodies, as well as from the National Film Board and Telefilm Canada, and from three provincial arts council agencies, as well as the Canada Council. His films have played festivals and screens around the world.
Roy is an active member of Montreal's Anglophone Improv Theatre scene. He is currently in training for a half-Ironman in 2025. He calls Montreal home, but when homesick, he often faces west to feel the whisper of prairie winds. His favourite colour is blue.
Research interests
Early cinema, silent era, black and white film processing, sound design, processing apparatus, 35mm Konvas cameras, reversal, black and white film, nitrate films, intermittent motion, flicker, shimmerAreas of expertise
alternative approaches to script-writing, sound design, analog audio, low-budget, black and white, diy, environmentally friendly methods for film processing Labcaf, liberating parameters, working with constraints,
A Dark Blue Sky
A Dark Blue Sky
A Wondrous Blue
Loch Bellows Cross
A Wondrous Blue, near Val Marie, SK
Loch Bellows Cross
A Wondrous Blue
Michael Wees
Montreal Triathlon
Teaching Activities
Teaching Philosophy
Roy was the recipient of the 2015 Faculty of Fine Arts Distinguished Teaching Award.
Roy's teaching philosophy revolves around a quadrant that includes theory, writing, praxis and critique. The umbrella that shelters all of these components is the artist’s process.
He believes that a series of constraints placed on students does not limit their creative possibilities but rather frees them to explore deeper imaginations. As such he refers to these limitations as liberating parameters. All his assignments and exercises come with a series of liberating parameters, whether the number of actors or locations they can work with, the amount of equipment they have access to, or formal considerations, among many others. Born out of cost necessity, this has been a part of his own artistic practice for many years but has proven to be creatively beneficial far beyond fiscal concerns.
Research activities
Research
Funded by a three-year FRQSC research-creation grant, Cross has recently wrapped up researching low-toxic photochemical processes with his motion picture processing lab: The LabCaf.
He built a 4x5 pinhole camera and shot a series of portraits and self-portraits. He has also taken up screen printing as a means of exhibiting digital photographs. His recent interest in still photography accompanies his research into the concept of the "story within a frame".
A Wondrous Blue is a short fiction film. The film was shot on 35mm B&W, with some footage processed in the LabCaf. It is currently in post-production and resisting completion.
The first draft of a novel, Chasing Wendy O, is currently undergoing a second draft rewrite.
Musing has started on a new fiction film.