Many of us might know senior film and television director and scriptwriter Jose Javier Reyes for his award-winning films and top-rating TV shows, but for his students at De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde (DLS-CSB), he is known for being in touch with the ideas and concerns of millennials, a trait that has helped him come up with the stories in his many projects.
Reyes, a Filmmaking fellow at Benilde, says teaching keeps him in touch with today’s trends and viewpoints.
“Why do I teach? Because I want to keep on learning,” Reyes declared. “And the only way for me to be in touch with my audience is to be with them, to immerse myself in their world, and to grasp the way they think, the way they look at what’s around them. A professor’s learning never ceases. And as media practitioner, it is important that I know my audience. It is important that I can relate to Katy Perry and Taylor Swift, as I can appreciate Virginia Woolf and Edna St. Vincent Millay.”
He gave up a budding career as a teacher at De La Salle University (DLSU) in 1984 to pursue his passion. He started out as a scriptwriter for television and film, before moving on as director. He was the writer behind long-running sitcoms, including Palibhasa Lalaki, starring then rising hunks Richard Gomez and Joey Marquez. From TV, he moved on to film and prospered from his association with some of the country’s leading lights in cinema.
“My knowledge of the field came from working as a writer for great Filipino directors, like Lino Brocka, Ishmael Bernal, Peque Gallaga, Maryo J. de los Reyes, and Marilou Abaya,” he said. “I have practically worked with every veteran director ahead of me, except for Mike de Leon.”
He won awards at the Gawad Urian, Metro Manila Film Festival and Star Awards for his films, including Pahiram ng Isang Umaga, Batang PX, and Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo. As of last count, he has over 28 awards and 60 nominations.
Reyes was invited to teach again when DLSU celebrated its centennial. “And when I returned, I realized how much I missed interacting with young people. I never gave it up, and when Jag Garcia posted an opening in the DigiFilm Program at the School of Design and Arts (SDA), I grabbed the chance. So, here I am now.”
With his return to the classroom, he kept an open mind, behaving like a sponge, absorbing as much from his students as they from him.
“As a teacher, you must be adept to these changes, and see that the view of these kids is completely different from the environment as it was when I was a student in college and graduate school. That is why constant learning must take place in order to be relevant to your students whose perspectives are completely determined by so many factors around them,” he said.
The experience has also made him realize that schools are multi-faceted, its students representing a microcosm of today’s society. And this shows in what they bring to the classroom.
“Definitely there are unique ideas from Benilde kids,” he stressed. “There is also that distinction between the kind of Benilde students you have—the haves and the have-nots, the privileged and the scholars. It shows in the stories they tell. You know who has no interaction outside the security-guarded gates of their abodes from the kids who literally brave the MRT every morning to get to Vito Cruz for their classes.”
“But filmmaking is the great equalizer. It is not a matter of having or not having. It is a question of passion, talent and dedication,” he added.
As an industry senior, he has only one advice from his students: “I demand that they be brave.”
Reyes is quick to emphasize that many of today’s students are conversant with the latest in film and digital technologies, a blessing to many of today’s budding filmmakers.
“The students are brave because they have the technology that has become their second nature,” he said. “Millennials are digital natives compared to the generations before them who were digital immigrants. My generation and the next learned the computer, but the millennials were born with a keyboard attached to their hands.
“What is important is that you let them find their voices and be brave in discovering their voices. That way, filmmaking in this country will evolve, with each generation reconstructing and resurrecting their power of narratives,” he explained.