Tuesday, October 17th
The Nightingale
1084 N. Milwaukee, Chicago, IL 60642
7:30 PM, $7-10
The Chicago Cinema Society in association with The Nightingale is proud to bring author and filmmaker Andrew Leavold back to Chicago for a very special evening of action! Mr. Leavold is on tour promoting his first book THE SEARCH FOR WENG WENG, the thrilling tale of a former cult video store manager turned guerrilla film-maker and B-film detective who goes looking for the two-foot-nine “James Bond of the Philippines!”
An exclusive 90 minute compilation called THE LOST FILMS OF WENG WENG – three of Weng Weng’s Tagalog language films edited down to their essentials and subtitled into English – all seen for the very first time outside the Philippines! You get the gold from – Stariray (Dolphy’s 1981 gay disco actioner, in which a gruff-voiced Weng Weng as Chief of Operations teaches him kung fu); Da Best In Da West (another Weng Weng western also from 1981, this time as Dolphy’s deputy Bronson!); and Legs…Katawan…Babae! (stars Hagibis, the Filipino Village People, in a delirious disco kung fu spy musical WESTERN [!!!] in which Weng Weng makes a cameo in the final blazing line-dancing number).
About the Author:
Andrew Leavold owned and managed Trash Video, the largest cult video rental store in Australia, from 1995 to 2010. He is also a film-maker, published author, researcher, film festival curator, musician, and above all, unrepentant and voracious fan of the pulpier aspects of genre cinema. His writing has been published globally in mainstream magazines, academic journals and underground cinema fanzines, for the last two decades. This is his first book.
Leavold toured the world with his feature length documentary The Search For Weng Weng (2013). 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. 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.
He is currently shooting two new feature-length documentaries – The Most Beautiful Creatures On The Skin Of The Earth (also with Palisa), the third in his Filipino “Guns, Goons And Gold” trilogy, about erotic cinema under Marcos; and Pub, a history of Melbourne’s mythic St Kilda music scene as told through its most outrageous progeny, musician and artist Fred Negro. Both films are due for release in 2018.
Andrew will be in attendance for a Q&A and will be signing any purchased books.
Trailer for Andrew Leavold’s documentary THE SEARCH FOR WENG WENG:
