Edited by Dolores Tierney* and Guest Editor Olivia Cosentino<\/p>\n
Today, after its wins for Best Screenplay and Best Director at the Golden Globes Medi\u00e1tico reups its Special Dossier on <\/em>Roma, the film topping many personal<\/a> and institutional<\/a> lists for best film of 2018, w<\/em>ith contributions from a roll call of distinguished and rising star academics some of whom are regular contributors to the blog: Paul Julian Smith<\/a>, Pedro \u00c1ngel Palou<\/a>, Deborah Shaw<\/a>, Ignacio S\u00e1nchez Prado<\/a>, Jeff Middents<\/a>, Olivia Cosentino<\/a>, Bel\u00e9n Vidal<\/a> and Roberto Carlos Ortiz<\/a>. Medi\u00e1tico <\/i>would like to thank these contributors for their speedy responses and their quick takes on <\/i><\/em>Roma, and Olivia Cosentino’s great editing skills which have enabled this dossier to come “hot off the press.”\u00a0<\/i><\/em><\/p>\n Special Dossier Introduction and a personal experience of watching Roma On a grey Sunday morning, I took my children to Bethesda, Maryland to play in a park whilst I watched a film that, on that day, seemed to be all about childhood, and more importantly who does the actual child rearing: Alfonso Cuar\u00f3n\u2019s breathtaking Roma<\/em>. Two-and-a-bit hours of intense watching later, where I tried to absorb the incredibly detailed and evocative 1970s\u2019 d\u00e9cor (by production designer Eugenio Caballero), I emerged blinking to find my girls (with their dad) in a taco restaurant. Having watched a movie where children are often in peril[i]<\/a> (foreshadowing the film\u2019s climax) and Cleo\u2019s baby dies, I guiltily sneaked in beside them in the booth to nuzzle their necks (and steal a bite of their tacos).<\/p>\n I\u2019ve just published a book<\/a> in which I argued for Cuar\u00f3n (and others) as transnational auteurs moving between the Global South and Global North without really changing their aesthetics or perspectives on the processes of transculturation, migration, displacement and loss. But on that Sunday, I watched (and cried at) Roma <\/em>less as a film academic and more as a mother, who, like the film\u2019s Sofia (Marina de Tavira), has also counted on other women to help raise her children. Not the kind of live-in domestic help that Cuar\u00f3n\u2019s film details; nor the emotional or economical exploitation for which Roma <\/em>shows such a stinging awareness, but still I have relied on women to do the kinds of things Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) does for Cuar\u00f3n\u2019s alter ego, Paco, and his siblings and I recognize that these women (one in particular) have had a massive impact on my own children, and enabled my own moderate career success.<\/p>\n When I came to read reviews of Roma<\/em> however, my primary experience of the film as a grateful mother and the perspective that comes as a result of being a jobbing academic focused on Latin American culture, cinema and Cuar\u00f3n for twenty-plus years came together in a surge of indignation. One of the primary reasons for writing my book was to tackle the coloniality of Northern-based, generally (but not always) white\/Anglo male film critics in their approaches to the work of Latin American film directors like Gonz\u00e1lez I\u00f1\u00e1rritu, Del Toro, Meirelles, Salles, Campanella and Cuar\u00f3n. A coloniality, one could argue, which has led Richard Brody<\/a> in The New Yorker <\/em>to argue that in Roma<\/em>, Cuar\u00f3n doesn\u2019t give Cleo a voice.<\/p>\n Several contributions in this dossier (Palou<\/a>, Shaw<\/a>, Cosentino<\/a>, S\u00e1nchez Prado<\/a>) eloquently explain how Cleo is not the blank canvass as Brody suggests Cuar\u00f3n paints her to be, but likely a pretty accurate depiction both of his own nana (Liboria Rodr\u00edguez \u2013 with whom he conducted interviews in order to reconstruct her life) and a centuries-old structural relationship between Mexico\u2019s white elite and a poor mestizo\/indigenous underclass socialized to repress their own emotions and reactions in the interests of their employers. In scenes such as the roof sequence (see Middents<\/a>\u2019 video essay in this dosser) where the shot broadens out to show Cleo as just one indigenous domestic worker washing clothes in a middle-class neighborhood full of Cleos all doing the same, rather than reproduce this relationship, Cuar\u00f3n is highlighting and indicting it.<\/p>\n As with the rebuke to Brody, the contributions in this dossier seek to offer more local perspectives on Cuar\u00f3n\u2019s Roma <\/em>that can illuminate as well as contribute to ongoing discussions in the English language press and elsewhere. Paul Julian Smith<\/a> recounts his experience watching Roma<\/em> in Mexico City in the context of the debacle over the film\u2019s theatrical exhibition and the administration of new president Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador’s planned cuts to support for culture. Pedro \u00c1ngel Palou<\/a> examines Roma<\/em> in light of Brody\u2019s critique of it, arguing how Cuar\u00f3n\u2019s use of long takes and framing assert Cleo\u2019s voice and perspective as well as the fragmentary nature of Cuar\u00f3n\u2019s memory of his childhood. Ignacio S\u00e1nchez Prado<\/a> considers Roma <\/em>as an \u201carcheology of Mexico\u2019s class trouble\u201d, and how the film reflects on the politics of its early 1970s setting and the 1971 student massacre depicted in the film. Jeffrey Middents<\/a>\u2019 video essay and accompanying text explore Roma <\/em>as an auteurist text, which playfully references many of Cuar\u00f3n\u2019s earlier films, but in particular evokes his Y tu mam\u00e1 tambien\u00a0<\/em>(2001) .<\/em>Through overlaying the dialogue of the earlier film onto the later film, Middents maps the fictional Tenoch\u2019s and Cuar\u00f3n\u2019s own memories, but also offers a new perspective on Cleo\u2019s subjectivity. Olivia Cosentino<\/a> takes an intersectional feminist position on Roma <\/em>exploring how the intimate\/emotional labor Cleo performs in caring for the family opens up a space of critique that has brought about renewed discussions of domestic workers rights in Mexico. Bel\u00e9n Vidal<\/a> explores how Netflix new distribution model is both disturbing old models of cinephilia whilst also creating new models of engaging with cinema as art. Roberto Carlos Ortiz<\/a> considers\u00a0Roma<\/em> as part of a Netflix-produced journey of nostalgic Mexican media images and his experience of living through the phenomena it has become in Mexico City. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n *Dolores Tierney is co-editor and co-founder of Medi\u00e1tico. She is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sussex (UK), the author of two monographs Emilio Fernandez<\/em> <\/a>(2007) and New Transnationalisms in Contemporary Latin American Cinema<\/em><\/a> (2018) and co-editor of two anthologies Latsploitation, Exploitation Cinema and Latin America<\/em><\/a> (2009) and The Transnational Fantasies of Guillermo del Toro <\/em><\/a>(2014). She has also published widely on Latin American film and media in a number of journals and anthologies. She is currently writing about Latino Labour and Visibility in Late Silent\/Early Sound Hollywood and Mexican actors in Hollywood in the early 1950s, during the \u201cred scare.\u201d Follow her on Twitter @dolorestierney<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n<\/em><\/span><\/strong>by Dolores Tierney<\/p>\n