Andrew Leavold is an Australian director, documentarian, film historian, university lecturer, film festival curator, and entrepreneur. Leavold spent most of his youth in the middle east where his father worked. Due to the mass amount of films from all over the world being bootleg in the region, Leavold became a cinephile at a young age.
From 1995 to 2010 owned and managed Trash Video, the largest cult video rental store in Australia. During his tenure at Trash Video, Leavold produced and acted in many short films including his first directorial effort Lesbo-A-Go-Go (2003) as an homage to director Doris Wishman. A lifelong obsession of Leavold, was to discover the life story of the Filipino action-comedy leading man Weng Weng (1957-1992). Weng Weng is known to be both the shortest leading man in cinema history at 83 CM and one of the few Filipino leading man to have his films distributed worldwide. Since there was little to no information on the subject, Leavold decided to make a documentary about him called The Search for Weng Weng (2013). Leavold started to travel to the Philippine, interviewed people who knew Weng Weng and discovered many aspects of his life.
In 2007, a rough cut of the film was screened and caught the attention of some producers who bought the project, but decided to turn it into director Mark Hartley’s documentary Machete Maidens Unleashed (2010) about Filipino Cinema instead of focusing on one actor. Leavold was credited as an associate producer. Upon its release, the film met with critical acclaim, but Leavold remained unsatisfied wanting to complete his documentary about Weng Weng.
After negotiating with the producers, Leavold was allowed to complete the film and on November 29 2013, The Search for Weng Weng premiered in the Philippines and went on to a worldwide critically acclaimed festival run. Leavold won the Monster Spirit Award at the Monster Fest.
2015 saw the release of The Last Pinoy King, which Leavold co-directed with Daniel Palisa. The film is a documentary about Filipino action leading man Rudy Fernandez. Just like its predecessors the film had a festival run. Furthermore, Leavold and Palisa won the HIFF Award for best documentary.
In 2017, Leavold released the book The Search for Weng Weng which he penned and named after his film. The book further dives into some of Weng Weng’s life details that couldn’t make it into his documentary and covers many of his adventures while making it. The book did very well on library shelves, as well as being well received by its fans and critics.
Ever since and between projects Leavold continues to act and produce for other directors. He is often invited to give lectures in universities, and works as a presenter for obscure or forgotten films in various film festivals and events. Currently Leovold is shooting two new feature-length documentaries The Most Beautiful Creatures On The Skin Of The Earth, a third film about Filipino cinema; and a history of Australia’s underground music scene as told through the eyes of the artist Fred Negro.
