Biography
From 1995 to 2010, Andrew Leavold owned and operated Trash Video, Australia's largest cult video rental store. He is a filmmaker, published author, researcher, film festival curator, musician, TV presenter, and an avid enthusiast of the pulpier side of genre cinema. His debut feature, Lesbo A Go Go (2003), was a no-budget homage to Sixties’ Doris Wishman-style exploitation films, followed by Bluebirds Of Peace And Destruction (2006), a hyper-real reconstruction of a famous Brisbane vampire slaying.
Leavold traveled worldwide with his feature-length documentary The Search For Weng Weng (2013), which follows his investigation into the life of the Filipino James Bond of diminutive stature. A decade of research into Philippine genre filmmaking underpinned Mark Hartley’s documentary Machete Maidens Unleashed! (2010), for which Leavold served as Associate Producer. He has since gained international recognition as a leading authority in his field, teaching Philippine film history at universities across Australia, the United States, Europe, and the Philippines. Currently a PhD candidate at Griffith University in Brisbane, Leavold’s thesis will soon be released as a book titled Bamboo Gods And Bionic Boys: A History Of Pulp Filmmaking In The Philippines.
Alongside Daniel Palisa, Leavold co-directed The Last Pinoy Action King (2015), a feature-length documentary about the late Filipino action star Rudy Fernandez. The film explores themes of film royalty, politics, privilege, idolatry, and the power dynamics within the Philippines. It premiered as the Opening Night film at Quezon City’s QCinema International Film Festival in October 2015.
As of April 2019, Leavold was filming two new feature-length documentaries: The Most Beautiful Creatures On The Skin Of The Earth, the third installment in his Filipino trilogy examining erotic cinema during the Marcos era; and Pub, a history of St Kilda’s vibrant music scene told through its most notorious figure, Fred Negro. Both films are scheduled for release in 2020.
