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 Entertainment | April 2006 
Film that Imagines a California without Mexicans Enjoys Revival
 Erin Texeira - Associated Press
As activists urge work and school boycotts May 1 in what's being called "A Day Without Immigrants," a film with a similar title and the same message - America needs immigrants - is enjoying a revival.
The 2004 independent film "A Day Without a Mexican" made less than $5 million in theaters, but rentals are up and a new ad campaign is in the works. Some protesters are even sporting T-shirts with the film's logo, a silhouette of a man in a sombrero carrying a duffel bag.
"There's been a lot of talk about the film - it has served as an organizing tool, a kind of reference," said Yareli Arizmendi, who co-wrote the script and whose husband, Sergio Arau, directed the film.
Arizmendi first noticed renewed interest in the film when she went to protests in downtown Los Angeles in March. Not only were people wearing the film's T-shirt, others carried banners with the logo and some chanted variations on a key film line: "How do you make the invisible visible?"
In the last month, rentals of the movie are up 17 percent compared to the month before, said Leigh Savidge, CEO of Xenon Pictures, the distributor.
"It was the right film pegged to the zeitgeist right now," he said, adding that Xenon is planning new billboard ads and radio spots, and will give away T-shirts at upcoming rallies.
An HBO film titled "Walkout" also was prophetic. The feature dramatizes when thousands of Latino students in Los Angeles boycotted classes over poor quality schools. It debuted March 18, a week before hundreds of thousands, including many students, marched in Los Angeles.
"A Day Without a Mexican" is a mockumentary showing what happens when mysterious fog surrounds California and all the Latinos - one-third of all residents - disappear. Arizmendi plays a television news reporter who is the only surviving Latino.
The comedy plays on stereotypes of California's immigrants, who are mostly Mexican, as farm laborers and gardeners. Without them, carts of oranges go unsold beside freeway onramps and leaf-blowers spin in circles with no one to work them. The governor disappears, garbage goes uncollected and public safety is endangered as police departments are decimated.
The filmmakers' point: The state needs immigrants as much as the immigrants need the state.
Many immigration activists are now saying just that as they plan for May 1. Though there is disagreement over the strategy, many are urging immigrants to boycott work, school and shopping that day to show how important they are to the nation.
"One of the arguments is that immigrants take away from the U.S. economy. Then, if they're not here - if they don't work or buy anything - essentially the economy will go up, right?" said Oscar Byanko Sanchez-Quinto, a spokesman for the March 25 Coalition in Los Angeles. "This will be a good marker. Let's show our economic power."
"I think the film made perfect sense from that point of view," he said.
Though nearly everyone involved in the immigration movement seems to have seen the movie, not everybody loved it, or even acknowledges it. Reviews were mixed, with many saying its clever premise fell short. Nearly 2,700 viewers who rated it on Yahoo! Movies gave it an average grade of C.
"What? You mean the really bad movie? No, no, we're not connected to that," said Brad Baldia, spokesman for the coalition in Philadelphia that staged a Day Without an Immigrant boycott on Feb. 14.
Still, the film won festival awards in Mexico and grossed $4.6 million in theaters - more than twice what it cost to make. In its first six weeks available for DVD rental, it brought in $13 million, Arizmendi said. Netflix, which rents films online, said demand for the movie spiked dramatically starting late March.
Activists who want to use the film to raise money are free to do so, Arizmendi said, but the distributor now controls any commercial screenings.
"As artists, the pleasure is to really have your work resonate and mean something," she said. "Art takes its inspiration from reality."
"A Day Without a Mexican" film website: http://www.adaywithoutamexican.com
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