![\"\"](\"http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/files\/2018\/12\/Guia-Roji-300x170.jpg\")
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Netflix itself also exploited place in its Mexican promotion of the film. Ubiquitous posters of Roma<\/em> were placed side by side in the streets with promos for the streaming giant\u2019s new Mexican series Diablero<\/em>, released on December 21, suggesting a complete convergence of prestige feature film and long form television. Amid much polemic, Roma<\/em> was shown briefly in select independent theaters: the Cine Tonal\u00e1 (in the colonia Roma itself), Cineman\u00eda (where Netflix kitted out a theater with special equipment) and the twin film schools of the CCC (Centro de Capacitaci\u00f3n Cinematogr\u00e1fica) and the CUEC (Centro Universitario de Educaci\u00f3n Cinematogr\u00e1fica) (Cuar\u00f3n\u2019s Alma mater). An especially poignant show was held at the Auditorio Blackberry, which is built over the demolished Cine de las Am\u00e9ricas. Screenings at the public Cineteca Nacional belied the fact that the film was made wholly outside the Mexican institutional context of IMCINE. And viewers angered by the small number of screens blamed the commercial duopoly of Cinemex and Cin\u00e9polis for failing to show the film. This was hardly fair. Cin\u00e9polis sponsors the Morelia International Film Festival, which had provided the showcase for Roma\u2019s premiere in Mexico (Cuar\u00f3n appeared alongside the chain\u2019s CEO at the event). And the exhibitor explained in a public statement that the lengthy negotiations with Netflix had broken down when the streamer refused, as in other territories, to respect the three- month window, which by traditional agreement separates theatrical release from distribution on other platforms such as DVD or internet.<\/p>\n I myself saw Roma<\/em> in a theater on December 18, shortly after it had been made available online. My choice of venue was the Casa del Cine in calle Uruguay in the Historic Center. La Casa del Cine is housed in a small period building and is reached by ascending stairs around a central patio (an arrangement rather similar to that of Cleo\u2019s house in the film). Like Cine Tonal\u00e1, it provides a welcoming bar and restaurant for its fashionable clientele, adding social and gastronomic value to the film experience which is enjoyed in its two tiny screening rooms. Roma was programed in number 1, which at a rough count boasts only fifty seats. When I arrived, the line was already snaking around the patio void, which was hung with moody photos of current Mexican indie film stars.<\/p>\n Once inside the theater, which is decorated in true cinephilic style with French posters of American movies, things got a little strange. One patron brought a banjo and harmonica with him. The elderly couple next to me would talk throughout the film, commenting on the accuracy or not of its mise en sc\u00e8ne (in spite of my annoyance, I tried to consider this as a contribution to the study of Roma<\/em>\u2019s reception in Mexico City). The hirsute manager of the theater preceded the film with a lengthy announcement. He told us we were not allowed to get up during the screening and would be blinded if we looked back at the projector, newly installed to meet Netflix\u2019s (or Cuar\u00f3n\u2019s) requirements. He also warned us that if we so much as took out our phones, an act which would be observed by a monitor present in the screening, the film would stop and we would be ejected from the theater. Intended to prevent piracy, this warning seemed somewhat otiose as Roma was already available on Netflix and, indeed, on pirate DVD sold all over the city (one stall on Insurgentes was papered with multiple copies for 10 pesos apiece). In spite of this rigorous discipline, which served no doubt to enhance the scarcity and value of a rare theatrical screening, the audience responded with lengthy applause at the end.<\/p>\n Roma\u2019s most notable place of screening had come just days earlier when it had been shown outdoors for free in Los Pinos, the official residence just opened to the public by new President Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador. And watching Cuar\u00f3n\u2019s film that week in Mexico it coincided inadvertently with three of AMLO\u2019s political initiatives. Thus, the planes that fly over Cleo\u2019s house in the first and last sequences (planes which of course Cleo will never take) reminded me of the President\u2019s cancelation of the new airport in Texcoco, which he alleged would serve only \u201cfif\u00eds\u201d (\u201csnobs\u201d). The student demonstration in the film, brutally cut short by neofascist Halcones, reminded me of the stinging cuts to public universities announced in AMLO\u2019s first budget (he soon reversed those cuts, no doubt thinking that mass student activism against him was not a good look at the start of his presidency). Finally, watching a film made outside Mexican publicly funded cinema institutions made me think of AMLO\u2019s budget cuts to the arts, including cinema, which at the time of writing have not been reversed. These cuts attacked one of the new President\u2019s faithful constituencies, Leftist cultural workers. Most visible amongst those protesting against these cuts was actor Daniel Gim\u00e9nez Cacho, long ago the protagonist of Cuar\u00f3n\u2019s S\u00f3lo con tu pareja<\/em> (1991).<\/p>\n Beyond politics, the force of the film is of course affective. Hardened cinephiles in La Casa del Cine like myself did not hold back their tears in emotional scenes like the one when Cleo lost her baby. And Sol\u00f3rzano, most unusually, begins her piece by telling Cuar\u00f3n how she recently reunited with her own nanny, only to find (as Cuar\u00f3n correctly guesses) that her room was hung with framed photos of the child she cared for long ago. Cuar\u00f3n says that it is with reason that middle class Mexicans have forgotten their debt to the indigenous servants they once claimed to love so much. It is Roma<\/em>\u2019s achievement, then, to have retrieved those memories by allowing hallowed places of a shared past to dictate the action of the film, even at a time when the theatrical experience of cinema and the very definition of a feature film is so clearly under threat, in Mexico and beyond.<\/p>\n *Paul Julian Smith, FBA, is Distinguished Professor, Ph.D. Programs in Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures and Comparative Literature Graduate Center, CUNY. He is the author of 20 book and 100 articles. His most recent books are Queer Mexico: Cinema and Television Since 2000<\/a>; <\/em>and Television Drama in Spain and Latin America<\/em><\/a> by Paul Julian Smith* In her interview with Alfonso Cuar\u00f3n in Letras Libres, Mexico City-based critic Fernanda Sol\u00f3rzano begins by…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":2131,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[256,254,255,252,253,210,251],"class_list":["post-2130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","tag-alejandro-ramirez","tag-amlo","tag-cinepolis","tag-cuaron","tag-la-casa-del-cine","tag-netflix","tag-roma"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/files\/2018\/12\/la-casa-del-cine.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p49QSj-ym","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2130"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2217,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2130\/revisions\/2217"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/files\/2018\/12\/Los-pinos-screening-of-Roma-300x189.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nhttps:\/\/www.sas.ac.uk\/publication\/television-drama-spain-and-latin-america-genre-and-format-translation<\/a>
\nFollow him on Twitter: https:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/pauljuliansmith<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"