Biography

Andrew Leavold owned and managed Trash Video, the largest cult video rental store in Australia, from 1995 to 2010. He is also a filmmaker, published author, researcher, film festival curator, musician, TV presenter, and above all, unrepentant and voracious fan of the pulpier aspects of genre cinema. His debut feature Lesbo A Go Go (2003), Leavold's no budget exercise in recreating a Sixties' Doris Wishman style exploitation feature, was followed by the long form short Bluebirds Of Peace And Destruction (2006), a hyper real reconstruction of a famous Brisbane vampire slaying.

Leavold toured the world with his feature length documentary "The Search For Weng Weng" (2013), which chronicles Leavold's quest to find the truth behind the midget Filipino James Bond. His ten years of research on genre filmmaking in the Philippines formed the basis of Mark Hartley's documentary "Machete Maidens Unleashed!" (released internationally in 2010), on which Leavold is also Associate Producer, and he has since been recognized both in the Philippines and abroad as the foremost authority in his area of expertise, teaching Philippine film history at university level in Australia, the United States, and throughout the Philippines. A PhD candidate at Brisbane's Griffith University, Leavold's thesis is soon to be published as a book entitled "Bamboo Gods And Bionic Boys: A History Of Pulp Filmmaking In The Philippines".

Leavold toured the world with his feature length documentary The Search For Weng Weng (2013) and its book version (2017), on the two-foot-nine Filipino James Bond. His ten years of research on genre filmmaking in the Philippines formed the basis of Mark Hartley's documentary Machete Maidens Unleashed! (released internationally in 2010), on which Leavold is also Associate Producer, and he has since been recognized both in the Philippines and abroad as the foremost authority in his area of expertise, teaching Philippine film history at university level in Australia, the United States, Europe, and throughout the Philippines. Leavold teamed with Daniel Palisa to co-direct The Last Pinoy Action King (2015), both a feature-length documentary on the late Filipino action idol Rudy Fernandez, and a dissection of film royalty, politics, privilege, idolatry, and the Philippines' pyramid of power. The Last Pinoy Action King was Opening Night film at Quezon City's QCinema International Film Festival in October 2015.

As of April 2019 he is shooting two new feature-length documentaries - The Most Beautiful Creatures On The Skin Of The Earth, the third in his Filipino trilogy, about erotic cinema under Marcos; and Pub, a history of the vibrant St Kilda music scene as told through its most outrageous progeny, Fred Negro. Both films are due for release in 2020.
- IMDb mini biography by: El-Stumpo