Award-winning filmmaker Carlos Siguion-Reyna is now the chairman of the Cinemalaya Competition and Monitoring Committee, taking over the position vacated by director Jose Javier Reyes who is now serving as the new chairman of the Film Development Council of the Philippines.
Mr. Siguion-Reyna will remain head and program director of the Cinemalaya Institute, the educational arm of the annual biggest independent Film Festival. Since 2015, he has been giving workshops and conducting film direction courses at the Institute. He received his MFA in Film at the New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he also taught graduate film courses at its Singapore campus. His thesis film Patas Lang (Fair Exchange) won an award in the narrative category of the 1989 Nissan FOCUS Awards.
He has done 13 feature films, twelve of which were produced under Reyna Films, a production company he managed with his mother, the late singer and actress Armida Siguion-Reyna.
Hari ng Tondo (Where I Am King) received the Special Jury Prize in the Directors’ Showcase category of the 10th Cinemalaya in 2014.
His films won in various international film festivals in San Diego, Toronto, Newport Beach, Berlin, and Singapore, and local film awards Gawad Urian, FAP Awards, FAMAS Awards, and Young Critics Circle Awards.
His extensive repertoire in the filmmaking industry includes being selected as one of The Outstanding Young Filipinos (TOYF) in the field of Arts/Cinema in 1995, serving three terms as president of the Directors’ Guild of the Philippines, Inc., and teaching film direction and conducting short lectures and workshops at the University of the Philippines Film Institutes, the Directors’ Guild of the Philippines, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, and the Mowelfund Film Institute.
