Reality Effects brings together the reflections of leading film scholars and critics from Latin America, the UK and the United States on the re-emergence of the real as a prime concern in contemporary Argentine and Brazilian film, and as a main reason for the acclaim both cinematographies have won among international audiences in recent years.

José Carlos Avellar, Escola de Cinema Darcy Ribeiro, Brazil
David Oubiña, University of Buenos Aires and Universidad del Cine, Argentina
Andréa França, Pontificia Universidade Católica de Río de Janeiro, Brazil
Edgardo Dieleke, New York University, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Joanna Page, University of Cambridge, UK
César Guimarães, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil
Ivana Bentes, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Tom Cohen, University of Albany-SUNY, USA
Robert Stam, New York University, USA
Jens Andermann, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Domin Choi, Universidad de Buenos Aires and Universidad del Cine, Argentina
Álvaro Fernández Bravo, New York University, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Gonzalo Aguilar, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina

1. Cámera lúcida; José Carlos Avellar 2. Footprints: Risks and Achievements in New Argentine Cinema David Oubiña PART I: RETURNS OF THE REAL: RE-ENACTMENT, MEMORY, AND THE UNCANNY 3. Documentary Cinema and the Return of Past Events; Andréa França 4. Re-Enactment and Transmission in Contemporary Cinema; Ivone Margulies 5. The Return of the Natural: Landscape, Nature and the Place of Fiction; Edgardo Dieleke 6. Beyond Reflexivity: Acting and Experience in León, Rejtman and Coutinho; Joanna Page 7. The Scene and the Inscription of the Real; César Guimarães PART II: ARCHIVES OF THE PRESENT 8. Global Periphery; Ivana Bentes 9. Exploding Buses: José Padilha and the Hijacking of Media; Tom Cohen 10. December's Other Scene: New Argentine Cinema and the Crisis of 2001; Jens Andermann 11. Archival Images - Memories of Labor: Citation, Recycling and Appropriation in Contemporary Argentine Cinema; Mariano Mestman 12. In Praise of Difficulty: Notes on Realism and Narrative in Contemporary Argentine Film; Domin Choi 13. The I as Other: the Real, the Archive and the Witness; Álvaro Fernández Bravo 14. The Documentary Between the First and the Third PersonL; Gonzalo Aguilar