Joni Gutierrez is a filmmaker based in Renton, Washington. Joni immigrated to the United States to join his family in 2018 when he earned his PhD (Communication & Film Studies) from Hong Kong Baptist University. Aside from being a filmmaker who constantly engages with the Filipino American experience cinematically, he is also a photographer and media educator.
He is the director of the film Green (2013, 69 mins), in which he used the direct cinema style to re-familiarize himself with his family who immigrated to the United States eight years before the time that he was able to start visiting them. As a result of this process of behavioral study through filmmaking, this documentary intimately portrays a phenomenology of Filipino American experience as well as his personal perspective as an outsider looking in. In the same year that this film was released, his article "Philippines, Migration, 1948 to Present" was published in The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration (2013), edited by Immanuel Ness, Blackwell Publishing.
Dr. Gutierrez’ book chapter, "Cinematic Contemplation Online: The Art and Philosophy of Life-world Series (2017),” which is based on his dissertation, has recently (2020) been published. His contemporary practice as a filmmaker-researcher-educator is defined by a continuing exploration of cinematic realism. He has been making more films within the Life-world Series project, with the most recent episode speaking to our experience during the pandemic. He has been included in the Filipino American Artist Directory since August 2020.
