Memory is inexact. Once a relationship has ended, we remember only highlights, the best and worst aspects of our relationships, and the details of our lover's body. Roy Cross's films are primarily about memory, and approach its fading in different ways. A few pieces (Runnymede to New York, A Portrait in a Letter) approach the melancholy memory of long-ago regret; a past relationship is brought to mind by the unlikeliest trigger. Children playing baseball are unrelated to the memory of father as coach, but the connection is powerful once drawn. The letter examined in loving detail is illegible to us, but hearing it read strikes a deep chord.

Other memories have less to do with the mind, and more to do with the body. Once a lover has left us, the memory of their body leaves us too; only details and highlights remain. Cross experiments with his own film stocks and photo chemistry; the pitch blacks and bleached whites that result (especially in shadesong, and I Like to Kiss), draw out those highlights of memory in stark relief. Cross's camera investigates the lover's body in minute and drifting detail, viewing the body as landscape, as architecture. The microscopic flaws are seen as craters; the fleeting glimpse of hair, of breast, of rib-line, are the fragments of memory that remain when the lover has gone. Includes:

Through the Looking
1989, 9 min, 16mm b&w

Mirrored Homescapes
Canada 1991, 20 min, 16mm colour

shadesong
Canada 1994, 23 min, 16mm b&w and colour

Runnymede to New York
Canada 1997, 20 min, 16mm colour/b&w

I Like to Kiss
Canada 2007, 3 min, 35mm b&w

A Portrait in a Letter - Somewhere in England
Canada 2007, 5 min, 16mm on video

Breeze
Canada 2006, 8 min, 35mm colour

Also screening is So Faraway And Blue, Cross's 2002 feature. Roy Cross will be in attendance for all screenings.

Cross will also be teaching a workshop at FAVA: Collision and Fusion, on digital intermediates and Super 16 -> 35mm blowups. The workshop is on Sat, May 12 @ 2pm; $55 for members, $65 for non-members. For more info, contact FAVA at info@fava.ca or 429.1671.