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Movies About Cuba
 Grill Thrill: Cuban mechanics don't believe in subcompacts. Rolling ThunderCuban mechanical artists keep Ike-era behemoths on the road in Cinequest documentary 'Yank Tanks' By Richard von Busack FOLK ART often emerges straight out of poverty. What makes director David Schendel's documentary Yank Tanks a recommended film is that it doesn't strictly swoon over the poor life. Schendel observes something beautiful that happens despite poverty, not because of it. The Cubans in Yank Tanks have taken metal offal and turned it into poetry in motion. Schendel and his interpreter/interviewer, Javier Bajana, justly celebrate the ingenuity that's kept Yankee cars — 1950s bulgemobiles, long extinct in the land of their birth — on the road in Havana. These cars — sleek Hudsons, imposing Buicks and enormous Ike-era Cadillacs — are memorials to a time when Cuba's rich were importing American luxury cars by the score, right before the fall of the Batista regime. These jalopies, ancient and corroded by the salt air, are renovated and kept alive despite the U.S. trade embargo. They're doctored by shade-tree mechanics whose deftness includes creating spare parts out of jury-rigged kilns and the kind of low-tech equipment you'd find in a rural high school's metal shop. Some of the work is alarming: a brake reliner, identified only as Ito, bakes his own asbestos/ceramic brakes in his backyard, working barehanded with big fluffy piles of the deadly stuff, as if it were household flour. (Stick around to the end titles — the director does eventually intervene.) Yet some of the work here is inspiring. Billin, a former electrical mechanic who now rebuilds cars in his yard, is seen retrofitting a chain-saw engine onto a bicycle to manufacture a homemade moped. Apparently never having heard of a hybrid car, he theorizes out loud that a half-gas/half-electric engine could be a future breakthrough for city travel. "Every Cuban is a mechanic," says a proverb quoted in the film. Observing these "hecho in caso" cars, Yank Tanks chronicles how these automobile carcasses are revived. "They come in here with plants growing on them," remarks a mechanic. "They won't recognize them when them come out." The guts are cobbled together from parts out of Cold War beaters. "Our Russian friends are still helping us," says one interviewee, pointing out the parts of a Volga motor that he grafted on his Detroit engine. While Schendel loves the look of these cars (and who wouldn't?), he's careful to note that their mechanics work in a legal twilight. These mechanical artisans — maybe artists is a better word — are muscled into repairing government autos, which helps provide money and material for reviving these vintage beasts. Like old cars everywhere, these old cars do end up being pushed and towed. One stalled-out driver is seen, ready to drive 26 miles in first gear with a busted clutch. Most of the people interviewed seem to agree that the inevitable end of the U.S. embargo may mark the end of these homegrown mechanics and their venerable vehicles. Tellingly, the mechanics in Yank Tanks are mostly old men, with few young people getting into the trade. And any Californian who worked harder to get his smog certificate than he did to get his high school diploma can only fret over what the emissions are like from some of these rolling behemoths. Schendel is a first-time filmmaker who seems likely to take up where documentary-maker Les Blanc has left off. This marvelous documentary should be required viewing for gearheads, yes, but also for anyone who harbors daydreams of getting into business for themselves; the people here work hard but, despite it all, seem very proud and free. This article was originally published in the February 14-20, 2002 issue of Metro, Silicon Valley's Weekly Newspaper. Reprinted with permission.
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