My personal tribute to the Cedar River Trail (Washington State, USA), which has helped me stay sane and grounded during the pandemic — shot using iPhone 8.
Category: Joni Gutierrez Films
9 min, 47 s || experimental film / installation art piece
Somewhere in the North American Pacific Northwest region, the late afternoon sun casts its shadows on a banig, a handwoven mat from the Philippines. This short film renders that moment, together with live sound recorded along the nearby Cedar River.
Cinematographer (Director of Photography): Joni Gutierrez
Categories
Trip to Caramoan (2007)
Came across this short film that I shot on miniDV 13 years ago
Wildfire smoke has reached home. Shot in Renton, WA, USA
The documentary has always been an engaging genre and artistic practice for me. In this post, I present definitions, characteristics, and seminal examples of poetic, avant-garde, and experimental documentary films as well as my own cinematic works to illustrate the discussion.
Born and raised in Manila, I moved to Hong Kong in 2013 to pursue my PhD studies in Communication and Film. I earned the degree in 2018 and even though I have since then immigrated here in the USA, I still consider Hong Kong home. In this post, I share five short films that I shot in Hong Kong. These works remind me of my personal journey while I was living there as a postgraduate student and why this beautifully complex city will always have a special place in my heart.
Investigating Kracauerian Cinematic Realism through Film Practice and Criticism: Life-world Series (2017) and Selected Films of Lino Brocka
by Jose Gutierrez III
Note: This is an excerpt from my PhD dissertation, ‘Investigating Kracauerian Cinematic Realism through Film Practice and Criticism: Life-world Series (2017) and Selected Films of Lino Brocka’ (2018), which is available for download from the institutional repository. In 2020, my book chapter — Cinematic Contemplation Online: The Art and Philosophy of Life-world Series (2017) — based on this dissertation was published in: Kung K.WS. (ed.) Reconceptualizing the Digital Humanities in Asia. Digital Culture and Humanities (Challenges and Developments in a Globalized Asia), vol 2: 31-52. Singapore: Springer.
This final section presents the summary of the findings and conclusions of the study in three major aspects: (1) a prospective model of cinematic realism that resulted from the project’s phenomenological approach in investigating Kracauerian cinematic-realist film aesthetics; (2) an account of reckoning the Husserlian notion of the Lebenswelt which Aitken (2006) specified to be ‘a key to understanding Kracauer’s assertion that “physical reality” can be redeemed through cinema’ (Wils, 2016, p. 76); and (3) the implications and findings of using film practice and criticism as tools in examining Kracauerian cinematic realism (KCR). Lastly, this section will propose recommendations for further research into the subject using both written and film-based means.
The first public screening of the film was at the Hong Kong Baptist University on 7 April 2017 in an event organized by the Centre for Film and Moving Image Research (FMIR) of the Academy of Film. In this lecture-seminar, I talked about Life-world Series (2017) in terms of phenomenalist-realist film aesthetics.