Roma, el cine de la nación

Abstract

This piece explores several of the ways the film Roma by Alfonso Cuarón has been read in order to reframe it differently. Instead of considering the action of the film as something that happens, I suggest that it should be understood as memory. This, in turn, allows me to activate as a film of the nation, following the powerful definition put forward by Kojin Karatani, for whom nation is the amalgamate of the possible affects, exchange modes and forms of sociability abolished in order to establish a State conducive to the progress of Capital. Nation, despite its being essentially a ruin, is what allows citizens’ affects to flow towards State-Capital.