After completing my PhD dissertation, “Investigating Kracauerian Cinematic Realism Through Film Practice and Criticism: Life-World Series (2017) and Selected Films of Lino Brocka,” I knew its length and density made it challenging for most people to engage with. Like many academic projects, it existed as a long, detailed document in a repository. 

Recently, I decided to revisit it in a completely new way: I gave it to Google NotebookLM’s audio overview feature, a tool that digests material and turns it into a podcast-style conversation between two speakers. 

What came back stopped me in my tracks. 

Hearing My Work, Not Just Reading It 

Two voices began discussing my ideas — unpacking them naturally, connecting points, and giving space for moments of reflection. It wasn’t just a summary. It was a conversation. 

What struck me most was how this format made the content immediately more engaging. Ideas that are best absorbed slowly on the page came through with energy and clarity in dialogue. The rhythm, tone, and back-and-forth between speakers made it feel inviting, even for material that’s typically approached in a more formal, academic way. 

Watch and Listen 

I’ve uploaded the AI-generated podcast to YouTube — Deep Dive: Investigating Kracauerian Cinematic Realism Through Film Practice and Criticism 

AI as a Medium Translator 

We often think of AI translation in terms of language, but here it was translating between forms. 

From an academic text into an engaging, conversational podcast — one that can reach people in contexts where reading might not be practical, but listening is. 

This is the kind of medium shift that can open doors: someone might never sit down to read a lengthy dissertation, but they might press play on a 20-minute podcast. And once they’re listening, the ideas have a chance to connect. 

I had lived with the written version for so long that I could only picture it in that form. Hearing it reinterpreted through AI voices gave it a new life — like two colleagues bringing my work into a lively, accessible exchange. 

Accessibility isn’t only about language; it’s also about format. Change the medium, and you change who gets to participate in the conversation. 

Podcast Insights 

What if the world around us holds hidden truths that we often overlook? What if there was a shortcut to seeing the glittering, elusive, infinite life that exists just beneath the surface of the mundane? Welcome to the Deep Dive. This is where we take a stack of sources and pull up the most important nuggets of knowledge and insight, custom-tailored for you. Today, we’re embarking on a fascinating deep dive into how film, believe it or not, can help us redeem physical reality and truly understand our life-world. Our guide for this journey is a doctoral thesis by Jose Gutierrez III. He brilliantly investigates the cinematic realism of Siegfried Kracauer, not just through theory, but through the actual practice of filmmaking and the critical analysis of a powerful director, Lino Brocka. 

So what’s our mission here today? We want to unpack how Kracauer’s theories about film revealing deeper truths combine with actual cinematic practice to offer profound, often surprising, insights into our existence. We’ll explore how film can actually be a powerful tool for conscious observation and even a call to action in your own life. To really get this, we need to start with the thinker whose ideas are the foundation here: Siegfried Kracauer. Who was he, and what was his main argument? 

Siegfried Kracauer was an influential German-Jewish figure, film theorist, philosopher, film critic, sociologist, and even an architect. His career spanned from Weimar Germany all the way to the US. He was a real polymath who brought a unique mix of philosophical depth and sharp observational skills to everything he did. The key work we’re talking about, the one Gutierrez focuses on, is Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality from 1960. It’s a foundational work of classical film theory. 

So what’s the core idea—this “redemption of physical reality?” Kracauer’s core idea is that film has a unique potential to redeem physical reality. What he meant was that film is uniquely privileged to capture those fleeting moments we barely notice, like the ripple of leaves stirred by the wind. These are things that are just there, but we don’t register them. Film can make the unseen visible, and, crucially, by doing that, it affirms our lived experiences. It validates those small observations and makes them feel real and meaningful. 

That’s quite profound. What did Kracauer see as the big problem in modern life that film could push back against? He looked at modern life as increasingly dominated by what he called “systems of technical and conceptual rationality,” where everything is categorized, systematized, and reduced to data. He argued that this leads to abstraction. We start seeing the world through abstract layers like labels, functions, and ideologies, and we lose the thing itself. Objects lose their “poignancy and preciousness,” as he put it. We get an illusion of wholeness through big ideas, but we end up overlooking the texture of reality right in front of us. He also had an interesting take on distraction, which is usually seen as a bad thing. He reevaluated it, seeing it as an alternative to rigid, totalizing systems of rationality. Sometimes getting lost in something or being distracted can free you from those very structured ways of thinking. 

This connects to another key concept, the Lebenswelt, or the life-world. The Lebenswelt is a crucial term he borrowed from phenomenology, which is about lived experience. In essence, the Lebenswelt is the world of lived experience, or the sum of humankind’s involvement in everyday affairs. It’s the world as you experience it directly and subjectively, before you start analyzing it too much. Kracauer believed cinema could bring us back to that level, back to the things themselves, redeeming physical reality by reconnecting us with our Lebenswelt. 

So what’s the takeaway for someone listening? It’s an invitation, really. Kracauer suggests film can break through the abstract manner we often fall into when perceiving the world and lead us back to a more direct, insightful experience of our own existential situation. It’s about noticing more and feeling more—becoming more present to the small details and to the texture of things. 

The Life-world Series: Theory in Practice 

Kracauer set up this powerful idea about film’s potential, but Gutierrez, in his thesis, didn’t just write about it. He actually made films. He investigated Kracauerian cinematic realism primarily through film practice, creating his own project, the Life-world Series, back in 2017. It’s an omnibus film composed of ten experimental short documentaries. So he’s putting the theory directly into action, asking, “If film can do this, how do we actually do it?” 

He adopted a phenomenological method for filmmaking. The core principles were to attend to phenomena as they show themselves, to describe rather than explain phenomena, and to horizontalize all phenomena initially, meaning everything is considered equal at first. He used a variational method, making ten different short films to explore various possibilities of the Lebenswelt. It was a “below-to-above” process where he started with the raw physical reality and worked upward toward finding patterns or essences. It was a fascinating way to make a film, almost like the film was discovering itself. He wasn’t just imposing his ideas, but allowing the “invariant features” of the life-world to emerge through the process, making it a discovery for the filmmaker and the viewer. 

Let’s look at some of these studies from the Life-world Series: 

• The Quotidian (Revealing the Everyday): Hong Kong: Study One captures the ordinary, everyday Hong Kong, moving from bustling crowds to details you might miss, like an elderly woman recycling cardboard or the pattern of brake lights on a footbridge at night. It expands your sense of what Hong Kong is, showing the Lebenswelt as expansive. Study Nine: Yard Life goes even further, focusing entirely on non-human physical existence, like raindrops on a windshield or an abandoned dog toy. It forces you to look at these details, inviting what Kracauer called “disinterested contemplation,” and reveals the Lebenswelt as multilayered and intricate. 

• The Fortuitous (Embracing Chance Encounters): Study Seven: The Street uses multiple screens to show Hong Kong street life, highlighting unstaged reality and accidental visual connections. It creates a complex visual symphony out of chance, mirroring how chaotic and interconnected city life feels. This demonstrates the Lebenswelt as a flowing stream of chance encounters. Study Two: Young Filipino-Hongkongers uses a fly-on-the-wall approach to capture young people’s casual interactions and haphazard contingencies, showing identity as fluid and the Lebenswelt in the process of becoming. 

• The Indeterminate (Allowing for Ambiguity): Study Three: Floating Notes combines four different elements—video from an airplane, evocative text notes about global tragedies, 60 unlabeled photos, and the sound of a metro train. By withholding specific geographical information, it encourages you to connect with the images on a more universal, human level, fostering resonance and empathy. This shows the Lebenswelt as resonantly intersubjective, with our experiences connecting across borders. Study Ten: Under the Bridge focuses on meaningful formations in nature—reflections, shadows, and tree roots—paired with classical music. This sustained inquiry into nature’s details reveals the Lebenswelt as a thing of beauty, possessing its own compelling organic design. 

• The Flow of Life (Emphasizing Becoming Over Being): Study Eight: Intercity alternates shots from Shenzhen and Seattle. It moves from showing differences to revealing shared human needs and, finally, to pure natural elements like sunlight and falling snow. It moves from difference to similarity to something universal, illustrating the Lebenswelt as relating to underlying patterns and as cyclical. It invites contemplation of the universal flow of life beneath surface variations. Study Five: Rain focuses on a typhoon cycle in Hong Kong, from the build-up to the aftermath. It’s a meditative look at a natural cycle, showing the Lebenswelt as cyclical and the city’s adaptable flow of life. 

• The Spiritual Life Itself (Connecting to Something Bigger): Study Four: Resilient Textures, shot in Vietnam, explores this by showing spiritually inspired sculptures blending into natural rock formations, but also elements like glorious clouds and beaming sunlight. It explores the Lebenswelt as transcendent, reflecting a universal human yearning to connect with something bigger within the physical world. Study Six: Return Home probes the idea of home by mixing black-and-white travel footage with color photos. It culminates with a photo of the supermoon, expanding the idea of home to encompass the entire Lebenswelt and suggesting that our life-world is inherently meaning-laden. 

The Life-world Series is a rich, practical application of Kracauer’s ideas. But the thesis didn’t stop there. 

Film Criticism: Lino Brocka 

The other major part of Gutierrez’s investigation was examining Kracauerian cinematic realism through the works of Filipino film director Lino Brocka. Brocka was incredibly prolific, directing over 70 films, and is known for his powerful, socially relevant melodramas. He was committed to exposing the “reality of the human condition,” particularly focusing on mass poverty and human rights abuses, often during the Marcos dictatorship. His films were acts of social commentary. 

He had a particular “milieu movie” style. He insisted on shooting on location, often in slums, creating an incredible sense of “sweating physicality.” He saw cinema as a mirror that confronts people, wanting audiences to see realities they might prefer to ignore. 

So how did Brocka’s films connect with Kracauer’s ideas? Brocka is perfect for illustrating the refuse, or confronting the overlooked. Take I Carry the World (1987) or Insiang (1976), both shot in Manila’s dumpsite slums. For Brocka, Kracauer’s refuse—the garbage and waste—expands to include the entire environment and, critically, the marginalized people society has discarded. These films are intentionally disturbing, forcing you to confront what society often prefers to keep hidden and to question your own complicity in ignoring such realities within your own Lebenswelt. 

In Weighed but Found Wanting (1974), the refuse is personified by a mad woman who is publicly shamed. When she regains her clarity, she exposes the hypocrisy and injustice of society, showing how truth can be hidden in plain sight within those we discard. In Three, Two, One (1974), a mother living in the slums embodies the refuse, and her raw physical experience reveals profound social inequities. Brocka’s goal with these films, Gutierrez argues, is to transform you from an agitated witness into a truly conscious observer by showing reality directly and unvarnished. It’s a call to see clearly. 

What about Kracauer’s idea of the transient, highlighting fleeting impressions? In Manila in the Claws of Light (1975), the main character’s despair is sometimes conveyed through what Kracauer called “free hovering images,” like shots of a park or a flowing fountain. These moments of almost disinterested contemplation offer poignant insight into his confinement without being overly explicit. It’s a more subtle approach. In films like Bona (1980), you get amazing crowd scenes that emphasize a multiplicity of sense perceptions, making you feel the heat and energy. These scenes foster an intuitive understanding that the transient, constantly shifting flow of life is essential, and that change is possible within that flow. It connects the fleeting nature of the moment to the potential for real transformation. 

Ultimately, Brocka’s work wasn’t just about showing reality; it was a kind of call to action. By portraying this raw, unabstracted reality, his films aim to empower the spectator to become a conscious observer who can see through ideological conditioning, discern the truth in their own life-world, and potentially act upon it to pursue freedom and change. He wanted his audience to do more than just watch; he wanted them to wake up, to see, and then to act. 

Final Thoughts from the Podcast

We’ve taken a journey today, diving into Kracauerian cinematic realism through Jose Gutierrez III’s thesis. We’ve seen how film theory meets film practice through Gutierrez’s own experimental Life-world Series, and how it meets film criticism through the powerful work of Lino Brocka. 

The core idea is that film can cut through the abstraction of modern life. By focusing on the things themselves—the quotidian, the fortuitous, the indeterminate, the flow of life, the spiritual hints in the everyday, the transient moments, and even the refuse—film can reveal the true nature of our Lebenswelt. It shows that our life-world is expansive, multilayered, flowing, interconnected, and deeply meaning-laden. It brings us back to a richer, more textured experience of reality. 

Kracauer once said that the true film artist ventures deep into the jungle of material phenomena to find new paths for contemplation. What if you approached your own daily life with that same spirit? How might you become a kind of film artist of your own reality? What if you started deeply looking at the ordinary things around you—those unnoticed details, the chance encounters, the moments that just seem to shift and change? What unseen truths might you discover? Could you unlock that glittering, elusive, infinite life that Kracauer believed was waiting there, just beneath the surface all along? 

Accessibility and Pedagogical Benefits 

AI didn’t change my ideas. It changed how people can hear them — and that shift in accessibility might be its most powerful gift. Beyond the novelty, there are clear pedagogical benefits here. In the spirit of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), offering multiple means of engagement — text, audio, and video — invites more learners into the conversation. 

This experiment reminded me that when we make ideas available in more than one medium, we’re not just repackaging content — we’re expanding who gets to participate in learning. AI can be a valuable partner in making that happen. 

Read my PhD Dissertation

For a deeper dive into these ideas — including the full Life-world Series and my analysis of Lino Brocka’s films — you can read my PhD dissertation: Investigating Kracauerian Cinematic Realism Through Film Practice and Criticism: Life-World Series (2017) and Selected Films of Lino Brocka.

Appendix: Full Transcript of the Podcast

What if the world around us, you know, the everyday reality we navigate holds these kind of hidden truths that we often just overlook?

What if there was a shortcut, maybe, to seeing the, well, the glittering, elusive, infinite life that exists just beneath the surface of the mundane?

Welcome to the Deep Dive.

Yeah.

This is where we take a stack of sources and really pull up the most important nuggets of knowledge and insight, custom-tailored for you.

And today, we’re embarking on a really fascinating deep dive into how film, believe it or not, can help us redeem physical reality, how it can help us truly understand our life-world.

Our guide for this journey is a doctoral thesis by Jose Gutierrez III.

And what’s great is that he brilliantly investigates the cinematic realism of Siegfried Kracauer, not just through theory, but through the actual practice of filmmaking.

Oh, interesting.

So hands-on stuff too.

Yeah, and through the critical analysis of a really powerful director, Lino Brocka.

Okay, so what’s our mission here today?

Well, we want to unpack how Kracauer’s theories about film revealing deeper truths, how they combine with actual cinematic practice to offer some profound, often quite surprising insights into our existence.

Right.

And explore how film can actually be a powerful tool for, like, conscious observation, maybe even a call to action in your own life.

Exactly.

So to really get this, we probably need to start with the thinker whose ideas are sort of the foundation here.

Siegfried Kracauer.

Who was he?

What was his main argument?

Okay, so Siegfried Kracauer, he was a really influential German-Jewish figure, film theorist, philosopher, film critic, sociologist, even an architect.

His career spanned from, you know, Weimar Germany all the way to the US.

A real polymath then?

Definitely.

He brought this unique mix of philosophical depth and really sharp observational skills to everything he did.

And the key work we’re talking about, the one Gutierrez focuses on, is Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality, right, from 1960.

That’s the one.

It’s widely regarded as, you know, a canonical work of classical film theory, foundational stuff.

So what’s the core idea, this redemption of physical reality?

What does that actually mean?

Yeah, it sounds a bit grand, doesn’t it?

Kracauer’s core idea is that film has this unique potential, this special ability to redeem physical reality.

Okay.

What he meant was film is uniquely privileged to capture those fleeting moments.

The things we barely notice, like his famous example, is the ripple of leaves stirred by the wind.

Okay.

Things that are just there, but we don’t register them.

Precisely.

Film can make the unseen visible.

And crucially, by doing that, it sort of affirms our lived experiences.

It validates those small observations and makes them feel real and meaningful.

That’s quite profound.

What did Kracauer see as the big problem in modern life that film could sort of push back against?

Well, he looked around at modern life, increasingly dominated by what he called its systems of technical and conceptual rationality.

So like everything being categorized, systematized, reduced to data.

Exactly.

And he argued, this leads to abstraction.

We start seeing the world through these abstract layers, labels, functions, ideologies, and we lose the thing itself.

Right.

Objects lose their poignancy and preciousness, as he put it.

We get this illusion of wholeness, maybe through big ideas or systems, but we end up overlooking the obvious, the texture of reality right in front of us.

He also had this interesting take on distraction, didn’t he?

Usually seen as a bad thing.

Yeah, he kind of reevaluated it.

He saw it not just negatively, but maybe as an alternative to those really rigid, totalizing systems of rationality.

Sometimes getting lost in something, being distracted, can actually free you from those very structured ways of thinking.

Interesting.

Okay.

And this connects to another key concept you mentioned: the Lebenswelt, the life-world.

Yes, Lebenswelt, the crucial term he borrowed from phenomenology, specifically from Husserl.

Phenomenology, that’s about lived experience.

In essence, yes.

The Lebenswelt is the world of lived experience, or you could say, the sum of man’s involvement in everyday affairs.

It’s the world as you experience it directly, subjectively, before you start analyzing it too much.

So it’s my personal reality, how I feel the world, pretty much the raw felt experience.

And Kracauer believes cinema could bring us back to that level, back to the things themselves, redeeming physical reality by reconnecting us with our Lebenswelt.

So that, so what, for someone listening: How does this change how you see things?

Well, it’s an invitation, really, Kracauer suggests film can break through that abstract manner we often fall into when perceiving the world, can lead us back to a more direct, maybe more insightful experience of our own existential situation.

It’s about noticing more, feeling more.

Becoming more present to the small details, maybe.

Absolutely, to the texture of things.

Okay, so Kracauer sets up this powerful idea about film’s potential, but Gutierrez, in his thesis, didn’t just write about it.

You said he actually made films.

That’s right.

He really investigated Kracauerian cinematic realism, primarily through film practice.

He created his own project, the Life-world Series, back in 2017.

It’s an omnibus film, basically ten experimental short documentaries, ten shorts.

Wow.

So he’s putting the theory directly into action.

Exactly.

Yeah.

He’s asking, okay, if film can do this, how do we actually do it?

How do we film the Lebenswelt?

And how did he approach it?

What was the method?

You mentioned Phenomenology.

Yeah, he had adopted the phenomenological method for filmmaking.

The core principles were things like: attend to phenomena as they show themselves.

Just watch basically.

Okay, then describe don’t explain phenomena.

So show, don’t tell, in a way.

Right.

And really interestingly, horizontalize all phenomena initially.

Horizontalize, meaning everything’s equal at first.

Exactly.

No prejudging what’s important.

Look at the grand building and the crack in the sidewalk with the same initial level of attention.

Don’t impose a hierarchy straight away.

Just observe.

That sounds difficult, actually, to resist ranking things.

It is.

And he used what’s called the variational method.

Making ten different short films.

Each one a kind of study, allowed him to explore various possibilities of the Lebenswelt.

So lots of small experiments.

Yes.

And it’s a below-to-above process.

You start with the raw material, the physical reality you’re filming, and you work upwards towards finding patterns or essences, as they call it in phenomenology.

So instead of having an idea and finding shots to match, he’s letting the shots dictate the terms of their own explication, as he put it.

It’s like the images themselves reveal things.

That’s a fascinating way to make a film, almost like the film is discovering itself.

It really is.

It meant he wasn’t just imposing his ideas, but allowing these invariant features, these essences of the life-world, to emerge through the process.

It becomes a discovery for the filmmaker and for you, the viewer.

Okay, let’s dig into some of these studies from the Life-world Series.

How do they show these Kracauerian ideas?

Let’s start with the quotidian, revealing the everyday.

Sure.

A great example is Hong Kong: Study One.

It really captures the quotidian, the ordinary, everyday Hong Kong and moves from the expected bustling crowds to these details you might normally miss.

Like an elderly woman recycling cardboard, hidden construction sites behind fences, just the pattern of brake lights on a footbridge at night.

Things that are part of the city’s reality but not its postcard image.

So it expands your sense of what Hong Kong is.

Exactly.

It shows the Lebenswelt as expansive, and then you have Study Nine: Yard Life.

This one goes even further into the unnoticed.

How so?

It focuses entirely on physical existence outside the purview of practical human life.

Things like raindrops on a car windshield, a bamboo wind chime moving slightly, an abandoned dog toy in the grass.

There are no human images at all.

So it forces you to look at non-human details.

Right.

It invites what Kracauer called disinterested contemplation, just looking without a practical purpose, and reveals the Lebenswelt as multilayered, intricate, life in ways we often ignore.

Okay, what about another Kracauer trope, the fortuitous, embracing chance encounters?

For that, Study Seven: The Street, is really interesting.

It uses multiple screens showing Hong Kong street life.

It really highlights unstaged reality and the fortuitous, those random happenings.

Like people just walking past each other.

Yeah, but also accidental visual connections.

Maybe someone pointing to directions on one screen seems to connect with something on another screen, or a date stamp appears next to a fleeting image.

It creates this complex visual symphony out of chance.

So it mirrors how chaotic and interconnected city life actually feels.

Precisely.

It demonstrates the Lebenswelt is flowing, this constant stream of chance encounters.

And Study Two: Young Filipino-Hongkongers, uses a fly-on-the-wall approach.

Observing people unobtrusively.

Yes, capturing young people in these casual interactions, dealing with haphazard contingencies like a phone suddenly ringing.

It shows identity is fluid.

The Lebenswelt as in the process of becoming.

Let’s talk about the indeterminate, allowing for ambiguity.

Study Three: Floating Notes is a powerful example.

It combines four different elements: video shot from an airplane, short, evocative text, notes about global tragedies, a collection of 60 photos without any labels, and the sound of a metro train.

60 unlabeled photos so you don’t know where they were taken.

Exactly.

And by withholding that specific geographical information, it encourages you to connect with the images, maybe of suffering or just daily life, on a more universal level.

It fosters resonance and empathy.

So it shows the Lebenswelt as resonantly intersubjective, our experiences connecting across borders.

Yes, connecting us perhaps to this idea of the family of man beyond geography.

It leaves space for your interpretation.

And Study Ten: Under the Bridge, focuses on meaningful formations in nature, reflections, shadows, ripples, tree roots – just natural patterns – paired often with classical music like Beethoven.

It’s this sustained inquiry into nature’s details revealing the Lebenswelt as a thing of beauty, possessing its own kind of compelling organic design.

Then there’s the idea of the flow of life, emphasizing becoming over being.

Study Eight: Intercity does this beautifully.

It alternates shots from Shenzhen and Seattle.

At first you see the differences or at different cities, different styles, but then it shifts.

It starts showing shared human needs like fast food places or community symbols.

A temple in one, Space Needle in the other.

And finally it moves to just pure natural elements, sunlight through leaves, snow falling.

So it moves from difference to similarity to something universal.

Exactly.

It illustrates the Lebenswelt as relating to essences, these underlying patterns, and as cyclical.

It invites you to contemplate the universal flow of life beneath the surface variations.

And Study Five: Rain focuses on a typhoon cycle in Hong Kong.

Yeah, from the build up, the storm itself to the aftermath.

Rippling waters, uprooted trees, but also puddles reflecting sunshine again, manhole covers.

It’s a meditative look at a natural cycle, showing the Lebenswelt as cyclical and the city’s adaptable flow of life.

And finally, there’s this idea of the spiritual life itself connecting to something bigger.

Study Four: Resilient Textures, which was shot in Vietnam, explores this.

It shows these spiritually inspired sculptures that seem to blend right into natural rock formations inside cave temples and ritual objects, but also just elements like glorious clouds, beaming sunlight.

It explores the Lebenswelt as transcendent.

Transcendent, but you said earlier, maybe in a secular way, not strictly religious.

Right.

It reflects that universal human yearning, perhaps to connect with something bigger than ourselves, finding that sense of awe or wonder within the physical world, within the Lebenswelt itself.

And Study Six: Return Home tackles the idea of home.

Yes, it mixes black-and-white travel footage with color photos from different places, different experiences.

It probes home as maybe an invariant feature, a core part of human experience.

How does it conclude?

It culminates with a photo of the supermoon, which kind of expands the idea of home to encompass the entire Lebenswelt, suggesting our life-world itself is inherently meaning-laden.

The Life-world Series sounds like a really rich, practical application of Kracauer’s ideas, but the thesis didn’t stop there, right?

It also involved film criticism.

That’s right.

The other major part of Gutierrez’s investigation was examining Kracauerian cinematic realism through the works of the Filipino film director Lino Brocka.

Lino Brocka, tell us about him.

Brocka was incredibly prolific, directed over 70 films.

He’s known for his powerful, socially relevant melodramas.

He was absolutely committed to exposing the, quote, reality of their human condition, particularly focusing on mass poverty and human rights abuses.

And this was often during a difficult political time in the Philippines.

Yes, much of his key work was made under the Marcos dictatorship.

His films weren’t just stories, they were acts of social commentary, often quite brave ones.

And he had a particular style.

You mentioned milieu movie earlier.

Yes.

His milieu movie style.

He insisted on shooting on location, often in slums or very poor areas.

His films have this incredible sense of sweating physicality, real bodies and real, often harsh environments.

You’d fill the background with real people, creating this vivid, unflinching portrait of the setting.

He saw cinema as a mirror, you said?

Yeah, a mirror that confronts the people.

He wanted audiences to see the realities he was portraying, realities they might prefer to ignore.

So how did Brocka’s films connect with Kracauer’s ideas, specifically those tropes like the refuse, confronting the overlooked?

Brocka is perfect for illustrating the refuse.

Take I Carry the World from 1987 or Insiang from 1976.

Both were shot in Manila’s actual dumpsite slums like Tondo.

In the dumpsite?

Yes.

For Brocka, Kracauer’s refuse, the garbage, the waste expands to include the entire environment, the whole milieu, and critically, the marginalized people living within it, the people society has effectively discarded or turned their backs on.

So watching these films is intentionally disturbing?

Absolutely.

They force you to confront what society often prefers to keep hidden.

They make you the viewer question your own position, your own potential complicity in ignoring such realities within your own Lebenswelt.

Any other examples of the refuse?

Sure.

In Weighed but Found Wanting from 1974, the refuse is personified by a mad woman named Kuala, who is publicly shamed and ostracized in her small town.

So a person treated like refuse?

Exactly.

But when she eventually regains her lucidity, her clarity exposes the deep hypocrisy and injustice within that society.

It shows how truth can be hidden in plain sight, often within those we discard.

And Three, Two, One, also from 1974.

There, a mother named Lucia, living in the slums embodies the refuse.

Her raw physical experience, her emotional outbursts.

They reveal profound social inequities.

Brocka’s goal with films like these, Gutierrez argues, is to transform you from just an agitated witness into a truly conscious observer.

By showing reality without distortion.

Yes, showing the harsh physical reality directly unvarnished.

It’s a call to see clearly.

Okay, what about Kracauer’s idea of the transient, highlighting fleeting impressions?

How does Brocka use that?

In Manila in the Claws of Light, a really famous one from 1975, the main character’s despair isn’t always shown through big dramatic scenes.

Sometimes it’s conveyed through what Kracauer called free hovering images.

Like what kind of images?

Like shots and Luneta Park, a flowing fountain, birds flying freely.

These moments of almost disinterested contemplation, looking at these fleeting impressions, offer this really poignant insight into his feeling of confinement, his struggle for freedom, without being overly explicit.

It’s more subtle then, yes.

And then in films like Bona from 1980 or Clutching a Knife from 1985, you get these amazing crowd scenes, a chaotic religious procession, a protest march.

Right.

Lots of bodies, lots of movement.

Exactly.

They emphasize that sweating physicality again, but also a multiplicity of sense perceptions.

You almost feel the heat, the noise, the energy.

These scenes foster this intuitive understanding that the transient, the constantly shifting flow of life is essential.

And maybe that change is possible within that flow.

Precisely.

Especially the idea that change, often through collective action like those crowds represent, is within reach.

It connects the fleeting nature of the moment to the potential for real transformation.

So ultimately, Brocka’s work wasn’t just about showing reality.

It was a kind of call to action.

Absolutely.

That’s central to Gutierrez’s analysis.

By portraying this raw, unabstracted reality, Brocka’s films aim to empower you, the spectator, to help you become that conscious observer who can see through ideological conditioning, discern the truth in your own life-world and potentially act upon it.

Pursue freedom.

Pursue change.

He wanted his audience to do more than just watch.

He wanted them to wake up essentially to see and then to act.

Okay, so let’s recap a bit.

We’ve taken quite a journey today, diving into Kracauerian cinematic realism through Jose Gutierrez III’s thesis.

We have.

We’ve seen how film theory meets film practice through Gutierrez’s own experimental Life-world Series, and how it meets film criticism through the powerful work of Lino Brocka.

And the core idea running through it all is that film can cut through the abstraction of modern life, right?

Yes, by focusing on the things themselves, by paying attention to the quotidian, the fortuitous, the indeterminate, the flow of life, the spiritual hints in the everyday, the transient moments and even the refuse.

Film can reveal the true nature of our Lebenswelt.

That it’s expansive, multilayered, flowing, interconnected, and deeply meaning-laden.

Exactly.

It brings us back to a richer, more textured experience of reality.

Kracauer once said something interesting.

That the true film artist ventures deep into the jungle of material phenomena to find new paths for contemplation.

That’s a great quote.

So here’s a final thought for you listening.

What if you approached your own daily life with that same spirit?

How might you become a kind of film artist of your own reality?

Meaning?

Meaning what if you started deeply looking at the ordinary things around you, those unnoticed details, the chance encounters, the moments that just seem to shift and change?

What unseen truths might you discover?

Could you unlock that glittering, elusive, infinite life that Kracauer believed was waiting there, just beneath the surface all along?