Retracing Bazin’s Phenomenological Approach to Realism in Film

The essay is an introductory reexamination of the notion of realism in film by way of returning to the writings of André Bazin. In a moment when the relation between images and the physical world appears increasingly unstable, Bazin’s phenomenologically inflected understanding of reality offers a productive framework for reconsidering how films engage with the world today. Cinema, as this article argues, can help preserve our contact with the real by enabling viewers to integrate the experiences of others into their own personal and social understanding. Edward Yang’s Yi Yi serves as a key example of how narrative form and phenomenological insight converge to reveal cinema’s capacity to generate knowledge and participate actively in the unfolding of lived reality.