Roy Cross is unequivocal about the influence the Yorkton Film Festival has had on his life.
“As a kid, I would go sit in the Anne Portnuff theatre for three or four hours and just watch whatever came up,” he explained. I didn’t look at the catalogue, I didn’t know what was coming, I’d just go and sit down and watch and I’d watch crazy movies from rock climbing in Peru and I’d watch crazy animation from the NFB, stuff from Czechoslovakia. I’m not sure, but I think I saw The Man Who Skied Down Mount Everest here”
That was not the catalyst, however.
“I never imagined that I could be a filmmaker,” he said. “I never really imagined that I wanted to be one. I can remember seeing things in my head but not putting it together that filmmaking might be something I should be doing.”
Then everything changed when he met Elwynn Vermette, the long-time film festival head who at the time was a teacher at the Yorkton Regional High School. Cross remembers him as a “fantastic teacher.”
“Elwynn’s philosophy, one of them, was the only way to learn how to make films was to watch films, so he brought them in from wherever he could find them,” Cross recalled. “So, we watched a lot of films and he had procured a bunch of Super 8 equipment, cameras and editors, and he taught us how to make films. We wrote scripts, we shot scripts, and edited and made these Super 8 films. “It was at that point that I realized, ‘hey, this fits me, this making films fits me.’ I didn’t understand exactly, but that set me on the course that brings me here today, is that filmmaking buzz from high school.
“After the first film I got a little bit ambitious,” he continued. “I said ‘hey, I want to do something a little bit bigger’ and [Vermette] said, ‘well, if you take the workshops at the film festival, we’ll talk about letting you make something a little bit bigger. I came and I took these workshops with this New York editor and Beverly Shaffer (NFB producer) was doing a series of films of portraits of kids for the NFB, she was here and she did a workshop and so I was in this room with all these professional filmmakers and we were looking at their work and so [Elwynn] brought me into the festival, so without the festival I don’t know if I would have found that as soon as I did, or if I would have at all.”
Process
At the time, Cross may not have recognized what made him a filmmaker, but in retrospect, it made sense to him.
“I think what happened was I started imagining things,” he said. “I started seeing things with my eyes closed and so, when I imagined things I saw images moving. I didn’t hear songs, I didn’t hear melodies, I didn’t think of lyrics, I didn’t write poetry, I saw images that moved and were maybe connected to a story, but were more often connected to a motion or a feeling, not so much a story. I started to see that’s what cinema was and so these daytime dreams, and even the nighttime dreams, and how I could easily see things, how I could imagine something happening that hadn’t happened.
“I had that, but I didn’t know what it was and then when I saw the cinema, I thought, ‘oh, that’s cinema, I’m thinking in moving images; I’m thinking in cinema.
“I dont know what I would have done if I was born 200 years ago and cinema wasn’t here, people might have just thought I was crazy.”
Homecoming
Despite the importance of the YFF to Cross’s career, he hasn’t been back to the festival since he graduated from the University of Regina with a Bachelor of Fine Arts 21 years ago.
After that he was off to pursue a Masters at Concordia University in Montreal.
“Sadly, it just fell out of line of sight for me,” he explained. When I was in
Regina I could drive back and forth but [as a student in Montreal] the costs were just prohibitive and I just couldn’t get back.”
After achieving his Masters, his financial situation did not improve much, as he sank most of his money into a feature film called So Far Away and Blue, which was commercially released in Canada and received critical praise. Cross credits the success of the film with garnering him full-time work as a professor at Concordia.
Since then he has been back to Yorkton quite frequently, but only to visit family and friends. Last year, during his summer vacation, he talked to Randy Goulden, YFF executive director and they arranged for him to finally return to the festival.
“It’s a bit of a homecoming for me, so I’m feeling really happy and that’s not something I’ve been able to say a lot, but I know I’m realy happy and I’m really pleased that the festival has got this energy about it and that these people come here.
“It’s been really great for me, it’s been really nurturing over the last two or three days that I’ve been here and just seeing these people together, I mean, I’m an academic and I’m still making films but it’s not my primary occupation. It’s nice to be around these filmmakers who are working and struggling and looking for money and it’s inspiring.
Guns and lobsters
In addition to being at the festival for the first time in two decades, Cross had his first experience with LobsterFest. He thought it was fun, but also “incredibly effective for bringing people together.”
“People say ‘unique’ and they overuse the word unique a lot, but that’s a unique event,” he said. “There’s no other film festival anywhere else in the world that brings filmmakers together, feeds them seafood, 3,000 miles from the sea and then hands them a loaded 12-guage shotgun and say go out and blast away.
“And the great thing is there’s five of you who are up on deck and I was up there and there’s a little bit of competition, but I met a teacher who was from here, I met a guy from Calgary, I met somebody from Winnipeg, and there was somebody from Toronto and within a couple of shots all of a sudden we’ve got something in common and now they’re not a stranger and I can talk to them and, ‘oh, you’re the woman who made that film and you’re the woman who works at CBC and oh, I’ve got an idea.’ It breaks down any intimidating factors that might inhibit somebody from going to book someone and it’s surreal, it’s almost like a Fellini film or something.
Liberating parameters
In addition to heading up three category juries, Cross presented a seminar called Liberating Parameters. The idea is to limit the creative process with non-financial constraints. The concept came out of Cross’s desire to get his students making more films by limiting locations, props, equipment and actors. It worked. The students made 64 shorts during a 26-week period.
Although most people have a hard time not seeing the process as a restriction, Cross believes it can truly be liberating creatively. It was more difficult for him to put into practice for himself, however, even though he was struggling to get new projects off the ground.
“It requires a lot of self-discipline,” he said. “I’m struggling a little bit with doing as I say.”
Nevertheless, he put it out there to the audience at his talk promising to produce a list of limiting parameters within a month and return to the festival next year with a completed project.
“I likened it to when I used to smoke and I wanted to quit,” he explained. “I never told anyone that I wanted to quit because if I failed nobody could scold me, but if you rally wanted to quit, the secret was to tell everybody because if they catch you then you’re accountable.”
“For me, I need to embrace imperfection a little bit more and not be quite so critical of myself and let things, on first draft even, just be good, good enough so I can get going.”
