JA Bayona had many teachers but “Teacher from Bayonne” There is only one; Luis Rey, a student of the history of cinema of the legendary Miquel Porter i Moix and also a great propagator of the visual language that he wanted and succeeded in bringing to schools. With his colleague Aurora Maquinay, he produced two volumes of “Cinema a l’escola,” a pair of influential manuals that serve as a teaching foundation for teachers within and beyond our borders.
As he recalls, Luis met Jota and his brother Carlos in 1986, when they were making a fresh start. 6th year at Sant Josep Oriol de la Trinitat Nova school. “I had a degree in history,” he explains, “but I not only taught social sciences, but also shared many other courses with Professor Adolfo. I was responsible for some introductory workshops in the language of cinema, which included the Bayona brothers. Since cinema begins with photography, we start by doing. heliograms, photograms, an auca about great inventions… And the great invention that JA, who was only eleven years old and in the sixth grade, chose was cinema.”
Was he chosen by JA? Or maybe for Carlos? Luis readily admits that he did this back then. difficulty distinguishing twins. “This made me a little embarrassed because their classmates knew them very well. For me they were both amazing. And when I corrected the exams, they both had excellent results.”
This detail from Auca seemed prophetic, but after a while, when Bayona was sixteen or seventeen, the professor truly discovered the greatness of his student’s vocation. “At that time, I was giving introductory film language courses through organizations, institutions or groups in the Nou Barris area. And in one of them he told me: ‘Teacher Luis, I want to be a film director.’ Two years later, I met him again in the front row at one of these courses. And it’s the same thing again: ‘Teacher Luis, I want to be a director.’” It was no use Professor Luis trying to put him down and point out the diversity of film professions. He was going to direct.
Considering his stubbornness, we still had to listen to him and even encourage him in his success. That’s what Luis did, loaning him some works (“He was making movies” super 8 and I needed a projector to do the sound editing”), as well as Aurora pointing him in the direction of ESCAC. Both closely followed JA’s successes in shorts, video clips, and finally movies. The king feels Weakness for “A monster is coming to see me”but he admits that “Snow Society” “may be his most important film from what I’ve seen from friends or family.”
Many are amazed by Bayona’s path from childhood in La Trini to the glory of the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. Not so for Rey, who is close to the director’s parents. “According to Juan Antonio, artistic direction is his father, Juan Antonio García, painter [industrial] HE [durante los ochenta] “He made huge movie posters,” he recalls. “On the other hand, to enter this world, you have to be determined, you have to be a warrior. And I believe that for both JA and his brother Carlos, her mother, Pilar, “He is a person who always supports his children to have culture.”