TIFF 08: Not Quite Hollywood

There is one type of documentary film subject that will always have me interested and those are films that have to do with film history. So a midday screening for a film industry that I knew nothing about initially caught my attention because a certain Quentin Tarantino is among the talking heads that make an appearance in the doc. Magnolia films is distributing Not Quite Hollywood – a doc about the exploitation cinema from Australia that came in three distinctive waves of indie films, commencing with plenty of T&A comedies, to horror films and finally moving onto road kill movies in the early 80’s which spawned a film like Mad Max (the only picture that that I’ve seen among all the films discussed in the doc.) It’s clear where Tarantino got some of his ideas for Kill Bill and Grindhouse. While the films were dismissed by many, and for good reasons, the torch has been pass onto filmmakers like Greg McLean, whose Wolf Creek is a great homage to the Aussie films of yesteryear. On hand for the QandA were director Mark Hartley and one of the personalities among the wave of filmmaking in Brian Trenchard-Smith whose picture THE MAN FROM HONG KONG was a kung fu pic that was number one at the Pakistan box office for a three year run.    

Not Quite Hollywood’s director Mark Hartley

The Man From Hong Kong director and producer Brian Trenchard-Smith