Update

“It’s funny because when you enter the theater no one cares about you, but after the screening everyone wants to talk to you. I think they recognize the courage it takes to allow others to enter your life, and they want to thank you for that. And for being strong... I have had immigrant workers come and tell me how they identified with the stories in the film. That feels really cool”.

She says she hopes that people don’t forget the movie when they wake up the next day. That they think differently of immigrants, and that people stop to think who made their clothing, and who did the many invisible jobs around them.

After working there for several years, Lupe left the Garment Worker Center to “take a break” from organizing. After a year working in a good garment factory, she’s now getting ready to start working as an organizer again. Eventually, she wants to open a cosmetics store because she “likes make-up”. She thinks that women sometimes forget to take care of themselves and thus may feel bad, or forget how beautiful they really are. She feels that a cosmetics store could attract immigrant women and that it could give her a place to hold workshops for women on self-esteem.

In June Maura was able to show the film to her oldest son. She says she was incredibly moved to see him cry, because “finally he could understand what I went through and why I had to leave him in El Salvador and come work here.”

Of the experience of being in the film, she says, “It feels weird, like it isn’t true . Something incredible. How could I even think that one day I’d be in a movie! It didn’t even cross my mind! …I feel proud that my story can serve other people, so that workers who are not paid well don’t let others exploit them. So they speak out and don’t stay quiet.”

In the future, she hopes to be able to save money to leave the garment industry and open her own business.

Despite this traumatic loss, her son Freddie studied hard and is about to start college, –while continuing to work to help support his family. He thinks that “the movie is good, because in the end everything turned out as it should have for them, as women, as workers and as immigrants. But as a son of immigrants, I feel kind of sad because everyone looks down on immigrants and treats them as though they have fewer rights than everyone else. Because our parents were immigrants they couldn’t complain about anything because they were always fearful of being deported. But I think we can fight. Like the movie says: ‘united we can make it.’ ”

Little Araceli is beginning 4th grade and doing well, and takes every opportunity to watch the film again and again. She says that “it’s beautiful for people to see you in a film.” She still wants to be a doctor, and now also a teacher, because “teaching is fun.”

Maria says that seeing the film makes her feel sad. “I constantly ask myself: ‘why did I put up with all of it?’ So it makes me feel very sad to re-live the things I went through. But then, at the same time, I feel good that other people can see that you can do it, that you can move forward and change if you want to. Just open your eyes and be strong.”

She just applied for citizenship and is studying to pass the test: “I listen to the questions daily! I have to know: ‘Who’s the first president of the United States?’ It’s George Washington!” Her hope for the future is to be able to provide for her children, so they don’t lack anything and are happy.

“Made in L.A.” premiered in June at the Silverdocs Documentary Festival in Silver Spring, MD, (just outside Washington D.C.) and then screened in Los Angeles at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Even 400 and 600-seat theaters were packed, and, in addition to the film festival’s regular audiences, immigrant workers from worker centers and community groups attended the screenings in force. It was very powerful to see diverse crowds, who don’t necessarily speak the same language and who might normally never meet each other, sit in the same theater, laughing and crying along with the women in the film.

After the screenings we had great, insightful bilingual Q&As featuring the women in the film. The audience response was just incredibly emotional. We received many, many comments like: “I laughed, I cried, it changed my life – seriously!” and “Your movie was a real eye opener for me. I was deeply touched by the brave women and their journeys in the film”. We think that people really didn’t expect to have so much fun watching the film, and at the same time to be so emotionally affected by the stories of each woman’s empowerment and transformation. While we had always believed that the film would be beautiful, it was thrilling to see how much it has touched people as it makes its way out into the world!
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Joann, Maura, Lupe, Maria, little Aracei and Almudena at Los Angeles Film Festival (Photo credit Maria Elena Cortinas)