Yareli Arizmendi was walking down the street in New York City on A Day Without Art two years ago when she had an idea–what if there were A Day Without Mexicans?
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The Los Angeles-based actress and her husband, filmmaker Sergio Arau, discussed making a video based on the concept. But the project didn’t come together until this spring, when the Mexican Fine Art Center Museum in Chicago, where the two had appeared separately in the annual performing arts festival, gave them a deadline and funding for a camera and an editor. The pair spent two months working on the video, acting as directors, producers, and crew members. They also managed to get their friends–actors and nonactors alike–to donate their work.
In the video, an advertising executive who recently launched a campaign aimed at the Latino market despairs that his audience is gone, then realizes he can use the crisis to talk his clients into holding a Disappearance Day sale. A heavy-metal band whose bass player disappears slowly realizes that although “the best bass player we ever had” hailed from Texas, he was of Mexican descent. Also among the missing are doctors, teachers, lawyers, and stockbrokers.
