Realism and the Audiovisual Media constitutes a major and entirely original contribution to contemporary scholarship on realism, one of the most fundamental concepts in audiovisual studies. At its origin, there are two recent phenomena: the return of realist tendencies and practices in world cinema and television, and the 'rehabilitation' of realism in film and media theory. The book undertakes an in-depth investigation of these phenomena, querying their origins, relations, divergences and intersections from a variety of perspectives, drawing on world-renowned expertise. Contributors include critics and theorists in the area of cinema and television, as well filmmakers. New theory is developed alongside re-evaluations of benchmark theorists, such as Bazin and Brecht. Case studies address issues in world cinema films and filmmakers, Italian neorealism, Japanese and Brazilian documentary films, experimental cinema and British TV, among others. The paperback edition features a new preface from the editors in which they reflect on the three years since the publication of the hardback.