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Read More: Fandor Aims to Help Filmmakers and Film Festivals with New Initiatives Fandor, the subscription-based film streaming and video sharing platform, announced this week that it will push into original content creation with the launch of FIXshorts. Under Fandor's Fix program, five talented filmmakers were chosen out of 34 to use Kickstarter to fund 50% of the production for their FIXshorts. The other 50% will be covered by Fandor itself in addition to the promise of distribution. Together, directors Ben Russel, David Schendel, Lori Felker, Maximon Monihan and Maya Erdelyi campaign for their stories to be transformed onto the silver screen beginning on March 12th. Their short films were ultimately chosen to reflect a diverse collection of content for Fandor including, one animated documentary, three narratives, and one documentary. The future filmmakers are hopeful that their campaigning efforts will allow them to join the ranks of the 120+ directors that Fix...

Maya Erdelyi's Anyuka, Lori Felker's Discontinuity, Maximon Monihan's Sea to Shining Sea, Ben Russell's He Who Eats Children and David Schendel's Dead Ink Archive are the first five projects in the new FIXshorts program, we here at Fandor are launching today. We're putting up half the budget for five new works and providing reward benefits on each of their campaigns at Kickstarter, where you can chip in to help see these projects through. As Dave McNary reports at Variety, "When completed, Fandor will premiere the FIXshorts exclusively in tandem with their respective festival premieres and the rights to each film will remain with the individual filmmakers." » - David Hudson...

Maya Erdelyi's Anyuka, Lori Felker's Discontinuity, Maximon Monihan's Sea to Shining Sea, Ben Russell's He Who Eats Children and David Schendel's Dead Ink Archive are the first five projects in the new FIXshorts program, we here at Fandor are launching today. We're putting up half the budget for five new works and providing reward benefits on each of their campaigns at Kickstarter, where you can chip in to help see these projects through. As Dave McNary reports at Variety, "When completed, Fandor will premiere the FIXshorts exclusively in tandem with their respective festival premieres and the rights to each film will remain with the individual filmmakers." » - David Hudson...

Maya Erdelyi's Anyuka, Lori Felker's Discontinuity, Maximon Monihan's Sea to Shining Sea, Ben Russell's He Who Eats Children and David Schendel's Dead Ink Archive are the first five projects in the new FIXshorts program, we here at Fandor are launching today. We're putting up half the budget for five new works and providing reward benefits on each of their campaigns at Kickstarter, where you can chip in to help see these projects through. As Dave McNary reports at Variety, "When completed, Fandor will premiere the FIXshorts exclusively in tandem with their respective festival premieres and the rights to each film will remain with the individual filmmakers." » - David Hudson...

Maya Erdelyi's Anyuka, Lori Felker's Discontinuity, Maximon Monihan's Sea to Shining Sea, Ben Russell's He Who Eats Children and David Schendel's Dead Ink Archive are the first five projects in the new FIXshorts program, we here at Fandor are launching today. We're putting up half the budget for five new works and providing reward benefits on each of their campaigns at Kickstarter, where you can chip in to help see these projects through. As Dave McNary reports at Variety, "When completed, Fandor will premiere the FIXshorts exclusively in tandem with their respective festival premieres and the rights to each film will remain with the individual filmmakers." » - David Hudson...

Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival

According to "Yank Tanks", filmmaker David Schendel's entertaining and equally enlightening documentary, at the time Fidel Castro seized power of Cuba in 1959, there were almost 150,000 American cars cruising the streets of Havana and environs.

About 40 years later, most of those classic Caddies, Buicks and Hudsons are still on the road thanks to the extremely industrious efforts of an underground Cuban network of mechanics, inventors and vintage auto enthusiasts.

Adapting to the realities of a 4-decade-old U.S. trade embargo, these men have learned to do some amazing things with chain-link fences, retrofitted chain-saw engines and homemade kilns. One cancer-defying entrepreneur makes a living relining car brakes by hand-mixing (!) his own asbestos.

While the still-rolling relics would unlikely pass a California smog test and the 70-minute running time will curb its theatrical potential, this baby is custom-built for ancillary speed.

In addition to those fascinating interview subjects, vivid digital filmmaking and the likes of Chucho Valdes and Cachao on the pulsating soundtrack, there's even more under the picture's shimmering hood.

Refusing to steer away from a larger sociopolitical context -- theoretically it's illegal to operate private businesses in Cuba -- Schendel's sun-kissed images of those quintessential symbols of U.S. power and prestige still gleaming defiantly through the drab, poverty-stricken neighborhoods certainly make a case for the spirit of individualism being alive and well in Castro's conformist climate.