The most compelling storytelling often throws us with a twist. So when we learned that The Lincoln Motor Company and Vanity Fair wanted to team up with Film Independent to challenge a few of our Fellows to create a series of original short films that reimagine classic Hollywood genres, we jumped at the chance.

We selected a trio of Fellows—emerging artists who have gone through our Artist Development programs—and asked each of them to choose a genre to reimagine. Dana Turken chose the Screwball Comedy. Her film, A Likely Story follows two reunited lovers in a very modern world, but their outfits, movements and vocabulary belong in the 1940s, reflecting the genre’s roots, and showing a couple so meant for each other that they speak the same hilariously anachronistic language. Dana is drawn to the screwball genre, she says, because there’s usually a strong female character and she’s often calling the shots. She also reveals that she’s never tweaked a script as much as she did this one. “Screwballs are so much about the musicality of language, every little word had to be perfect.”

Inspired by his deep love of horror, Jacob Hatley selected the Thriller Noir, and made Factory of Dreams, a classic suspense movie set within a modern suspense movie. It’s Hatley’s first foray into the genre. “I love these classic American stories,” he says. “You watch these movies as a kid and think it would just be so fun to try this. I’d love to get on a set one day and see if I could pull something like that off.”

Directing team Nick Citton and David Ariniello went with the Heist genre and created a film called The Incident, which follows old friends Patrick and Clive as they escape into the desert running from a crime and find themselves in more trouble than they anticipated. It is a reinvention of New Wave American road heist movies with an existential twist. “It’s a really cool concept giving people a chance to find the essence of what these older genres were and take that essence and polish it up again and change it into something new that still has the kind of core,” Ariniello says.

As of today you can get a taste of the trio’s work through behind-the-scenes videos: A Likely Story, Factory of Dreams and The Incident. The films themselves premiere at a September 10 screening in Los Angeles, and beginning September 11 premiere on Lincoln’s website hello-again.com. Check them out. Maybe your (re)imagination will be (re)inspired.