Sergio Arau and Yareli Arizmendi
Ryan
Tubongbanua / The Collegian
“How do you make
the invisible visible? By taking it away.” This was the message
of Sergio Arau and Yareli Arizmendi at the SSU Tuesday night. |
By Laban Pelz
The Collegian
As artists, Sergio Arau and
Yareli Arizmendi see their task as making the invisible visible, the husband
and wife duo said Tuesday night in the SSU.
“How do you do this?” Arizmendi asked. “By taking the
invisible away.”
To this end, their 2004 film “A Day Without a Mexican” asked
what California would be like if all Hispanics, both Mexican-Americans
and illegal Mexican immigrants, suddenly disappeared from the state: farm
labor, groundskeeping and custodial work are just a few jobs the film
showed would go undone.
Arau, the film’s director, and Arizmendi, who acted in the movie,
said they began work on the picture more than 10 years ago.
“I did well in Mexico (as a director),” Arau said. “But
when I came to San Diego I was invisible.”
Arizmendi said the idea for the movie really began with the reelection
campaign of California Governor Pete Wilson.
“He was blaming illegal immigrants for the state’s economy,
and saying ‘vote for me, and I’ll fix this,’”
she said. “We were thinking ‘wait a minute. What about the
$97 billion these people produce?’”
Arau and Arizmendi recalled problems they faced while producing the movie.
One major American production company at first wanted a “Latino
‘Scary Movie,’” Arau said.
“I said ‘I don’t think we’re communicating. This
is very serious,’” Arizmendi said.
She said the company then talked about getting Mel Gibson to star in a
film where he’s frantically searching for his Hispanic wife.
“That’s not the point,” Arizmendi said. “The point
is not where they went, but what you do when they’re gone.”
She said this is how to show something most people usually don’t
see.
“It’s our job to find the angle from which things haven’t
been considered,” Arizmendi said. “Most people, we don’t
have time to think. It is our responsibility to bring that to you. To
make you curious enough to ask questions.”
Arizmendi said “A Day Without a Mexican” is very much like
California itself.
Arau is from Mexico, while Arizmendi is American. Though the movie was
shot in English and in California, the money came from Mexico and Spain,
but the film was released in the United States.
“It’s to inspire California to be an example of how to live
together,” she said. “This is not a Latino film.”
Arau and Arizmendi also recalled what they went through to get the film
publicized.
The first thing they did was have posters put up in the Los Angeles area.
With a picture of what Arizmendi called a “Juan Valdez-looking character”
on the sheet, the only other information was the words “Missing:
Jose,” and the movie’s Web site.
The next step was to advertise the movie on billboards: “On May
14th, there will be no Mexicans in California,” was all the board
said.
“There were crowds, and news helicopters. Sav-On employees (where
the billboard was posted) thought there was going to be a riot.”
Arizmendi said it was the rudeness of the advertising campaign that led
to people’s curiosity.
Comment
on this story in the News forum >>
|
