Synopses & Reviews
Examining Brazilian and Argentine cinema of the last fifteen years, this volume charts the emergence of a new concern with the real, bringing together contributions from leading film scholars and critics from Latin America, Europe, and the United States. Comparing 'New Argentine Cinema" and the Brazilian 'Retomada,' the contributors read across the boundaries between documentary and fiction and trace new modes of deploying performance and re-enactment, found footage, and the interplay between film and television and theater. They shed light on similarities between and variations in different Latin American national cinemas' filmic discourses and production contexts and map these findings onto the larger context of current film theory.
Review
Review
'Essays in this important collection challenge the simplistic notion of the much heralded 'new Latin American cinema,' drawing our attention instead to the local conditions that govern recent films from Argentina and Brazil.
New Argentine and Brazilian Cinema is an innovative contribution both to our understanding of reality effects in these regional cinemas and to our thinking about 'world cinema' more broadly.' - Andrea Noble, Durham University, UK
'Since Italian neo-realism, all new cinemas in the world have striven to approach and reveal reality. By assessing the new Argentine and Brazilian cinemas through their 'reality effects,' this book touches the political core of two thriving film production centres whose common language is truly universal.' - Lúcia Nagib, University of Leeds, UK
'This volume addresses key theoretical issues that have emerged with the dawn of the digital image by focusing on realism in contemporary Brazilian and Argentine cinema. The contributors consider the blurred and shifting boundaries between fiction and documentary in the specific context of two major Latin American cinema revivals that began in the 1990s. As a whole, the volume pushes forward critical debates around the concept of ´the real.´ It is thus indispensable reading for scholars and students of Latin American film and of film studies more generally.' - Lisa Shaw, University of Liverpool, UK
Review
'Essays in this important collection challenge the simplistic notion of the much heralded 'new Latin American cinema,' drawing our attention instead to the local conditions that govern recent films from Argentina and Brazil.
New Argentine and Brazilian Cinema is an innovative contribution both to our understanding of reality effects in these regional cinemas and to our thinking about 'world cinema' more broadly.' - Andrea Noble, Durham University, UK
'Since Italian neo-realism, all new cinemas in the world have striven to approach and reveal reality. By assessing the new Argentine and Brazilian cinemas through their 'reality effects,' this book touches the political core of two thriving film production centres whose common language is truly universal.' - Lúcia Nagib, University of Leeds, UK
'This volume addresses key theoretical issues that have emerged with the dawn of the digital image by focusing on realism in contemporary Brazilian and Argentine cinema. The contributors consider the blurred and shifting boundaries between fiction and documentary in the specific context of two major Latin American cinema revivals that began in the 1990s. As a whole, the volume pushes forward critical debates around the concept of ´the real.´ It is thus indispensable reading for scholars and students of Latin American film and of film studies more generally.' - Lisa Shaw, University of Liverpool, UK
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
Examining Brazilian and Argentine cinema of the last fifteen years, this volume charts the emergence of a new concern with the real, bringing together contributions from leading film scholars and critics from Latin America, Europe, and the United States. Comparing 'New Argentine Cinema" and the Brazilian 'Retomada,' the contributors read across the boundaries between documentary and fiction and trace new modes of deploying performance and re-enactment, found footage, and the interplay between film and television and theater. They shed light on similarities between and variations in different Latin American national cinemas' filmic discourses and production contexts and map these findings onto the larger context of current film theory.
About the Author
Jens Andermann is Professor of Latin American and Luso-Brazilian Studies at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and an Editor of the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies. Recent publications include New Argentine Cinema (2011), The Optic of the State: Visuality and Power in Argentina and Brazil (2007), and
Mapas de poder: una arqueología literaria del espacio argentino (2000).
Álvaro Fernández Bravo is Director of New York University, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a researcher at the National Research Council (CONICET). Recent publications include El valor de la cultura: arte, literatura y mercado en América Latina (2007, with Luis Cárcamo-Huechante and Alejandra Laera) and Literatura y frontera: procesos de territorialización en la cultura argentina y chilena del siglo XIX (1999).
Table of Contents
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