We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Amanda Reyes. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Amanda below.
Amanda, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?
My parents are second generation Mexican-Americans. They both came from humble beginnings and always had to work multiple jobs or have side hustles to support their family. They’re both brilliant, kind, creative and the best kinds of people. I couldn’t be prouder of who they are and what they’ve accomplished in this challenging world. My brother often jokes about how many activities and classes mom and dad signed us up for as if we couldn’t make up our minds on who we wanted to be or lacked focus. But my parents wanted us to pursue our dreams from the very beginning, whether that was to be a soccer player, a folklorico dancer, a baton twirler, a clarinet plater, or whatever- if we had an interest in it, my parents would make it happen. They invested in us and not just financially but mentally, with their whole being and that really made a positive impact on my self esteem. I truly believed that, with my parent’s support, I could be anything I wanted to be. And boy, did I try to be everything! And this helped me throughout my life, it really did. I had so many diverse experiences and skills by the time I was finishing high school that allowed me to flow freely in and out of different clicks and friends groups. I had the ability to use art as a catharsis and the know-how to transform negative feelings into physical activity. As artists, I feel like we stress over being perceived as “a creative” so much when really to be a human is to be a creative. I have my parents to thank for the knowledge that my identity checks many boxes and that I will always be learning and changing and growing.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My first major ambition in life was to be an actor for the stage and screen. I went to school in Los Angeles and was signed with an agency where, for three years, I would go on audition after audition for nothing but the most offensive and racist stereotypical Latina roles; the drug-dealer’s girlfriend, the pregnant chola-teen, the hoodrat, these were literal ‘characters’ I auditioned for and it really started to effect my mental health. As a 19 year-old Tejana, I felt angry that this was all that there was for me and other actors who fit my “type” because this wasn’t our story, this wasn’t who we were. Where was the depth? Where was the supportive and close-knit familia? Where was the ambitious daughter translating for her parents at her brother’s college graduation? Where was the humanity in our culture, in our stories? I was fed up and decided to go back to school and change my focus to film. I wanted to learn how to write an effective screenplay and tell the narratives that would uplift my culture and expand Latinx representation. I became very reclusive during this time because my family and I were going through a very dark and troubling period. The truth was that we were an inmate family. I had brothers who were in and out of prison and my closest brother was in the middle of a ten year sentence which deeply impacted mine and my parent’s lives. Prison does that. It takes over everything and you wouldn’t fully understand it unless you lived it also. The court visits, the 8-hour drives across Texas for the one hour, no contact visit, the police, the waiting, the lack of humanity, the hurt, the pain of it all. And the isolation and fear of not being able to speak openly about it with your friends worrying that they’ll see you differently, they’ll see your family differently. I couldn’t bare the weight of it all, so, I decided to make films about it. I decided to talk about that which is taboo. I made films about being in an inmate family and didn’t think much of them until I won a contest voted on by my peers at the University of North Texas’ Short Film Club. “Dear Brother” was the first film that centered around my pain and hopes of having an incarcerated loved one and it opened a door for me into a sort of secret community of people who could relate and see their families in mine. I decided to make my these film about my mother and I on a visitation day with my brother. I’ve made several works similar to this, including my graduate thesis film “Rosa’s Esperanza” about the struggles a family can face when bringing a loved-one home from long-term incarceration. I’ve written a feature that expands on my families’ experiences with the prison industrial complex that I hope to get funding for in the next couple of years or so. I’m most proud of this prison series because it is the most powerful work I’ve created that actually does what I set out to do all those years ago when I left L.A., it brings out the humanity in an often stereotyped world. In bringing awareness to what I’ve witnessed my family go through, maybe some unity can come out of my work, maybe some much-needed change and in my most radical moments, I hope it can help exploit the P.I,C and burn the system to the ground.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
I sort of just ended a major career pivot with resigning from teaching high school. I wanted to be a teacher at the high school level so badly. I was so excited to begin this noble journey of sharing knowledge and providing a safe and encouraging space for young minds to grow and flourish. I managed to revive a film department for an arts magnet school, was rewarded over 60K in new film equipment, I was awarded teacher of the month my first semester, directed a theater production that slayed. I was so excited to share my experiences of living and working as an actor in L.A. and working full time on production sets in New York, where I earned my M.F.A. I love my students and it was the most painful decision I’ve had to make in a very long time. It became quite apparent that my physical and mental health just could not be pushed any further. I was commuting an hour to school every day, and sometimes on weekends. I would arrive at 8am and wouldn’t leave until 9pm. My film classes had 29 seats in them but I was given 40 students in each class. Covid was a major threat the first semester causing students to miss weeks of school which made them fall behind in every class. Every teacher I know is struggling with what the district called “accelerated learning” where we squeeze in extra lessons that focus on emotional growth and development. And this is great… if you have the resources, if you have the necessary hands-on training, if you have extra teachers and specialists helping each teacher navigate this new world but there were none. Every new incentive, every new idea the administration or parents come up with to help their children succeed in the classroom all falls onto the teacher to figure out. Every minute of “off” time that I had was taken away by filling out reports and paperwork demanded by the district to meet quotas for some new databank on emotional learning or state assessment-based learning. I was happy to do it all if it meant my students would benefit from it but I’m not convinced we were doing all we could. My students were emotionally struggling, there were several incidents of violence, melt downs, blow ups, outbursts, self-harm, you name it, they were experiencing it, either first hand or were witness to it and navigating how to be the adult they needed in those moments burns you out. There was not a moment to rest, to breathe. I felt myself breaking. Literally- I broke my ankle before last semester and it only drained me quicker, especially dealing with our very complicated and convoluted health care which my salary could barely cover. I was a zombie and swallowed my resentment every morning when the bell rang. I felt beaten and useless and hopeless. I knew my students noticed my fragile mental state because they would express how bad they felt for me and other teachers. They shouldn’t have to feel bad for us. They should be looking up to us, not worried about us. They deserve better. We all deserve better. Something has to change within public education. The system is broken and needs to be invested in a thousand times more than it is now in order to save it. The fight can’t all be on teachers, it isn’t sustainable, it’s not practical. So many of us our resigning.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
Invest in local BIPOC artists. This means pay your local BIPOC artists a living wage. This means provide safe spaces where local BIPOC artists can work and be in community with one another. This means making public work accessible and affordable to all communities in every zip code. If you can afford to invest in art, make it local BIPOC art. Invest in BIPOC artists who have yet to make a name for themselves in the elitist upscale-exhibit art scenes. Art is meant to be for the people, not the individual. Be intentional with your investments and uplift representation by distribution of your wealth. Look for creative ways to support your local BIPOC artists, not just by buying their work but with mutual aid; pay for their medical expenses, donate to their education and housing so that they can continue to create work that brings us together through new perspectives and experiences. To best support a thriving creative ecosystem, society must put in the necessary harm-reducing work by questioning the way in which their city’s leaders funnel money into the arts. How is money allocated for artists and who are these artists? Is there a better way to live that is more equitable and sustainable and how can our policies change to reflect this? If your city’s art scene is centered around nationally-known, predominantly white artists with the commercial agenda of drawing in outside tourism, then your community isn’t creatively thriving at all.
Contact Info:
- Website: amandanicolereyesfilm.com
- Instagram: amandareyesfilm
Image Credits
Kaitlyn Kilpatrick Wesley Kirk German Torres