Review: !Machete Maidens Unleashed

One of the buzz films at TIFF this year is Mark Hartley’s Machete Maidens Unleashed! The Australian director didn’t set out to make another documentary based on exploitation films like his 2008 TIFF film Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation. Hartley originally had his sights on making a doc on Weng Weng, a 2’9 Filipino action star of such films as For Your Height Only and Agent 00. But when Hartley discovered Weng Weng had passed away a new idea developed in the doc Machete Maidens Unleashed.  This time Hartley looks to his neighbour of the north, the Philippines. Read more

TIFF ’10: Documentary line up announced

Festival programming announcements for TIFF 2010 are coming out fast and furiously these days, and yesterday they released a huge list of documentaries that will be screened in September. With world or North American premiere films from the likes of Frederick Wiseman, Errol Morris, Thom Zimny, Kim Longinotto, Alex Gibney, and Werner Herzog, TIFF wasn’t kidding when they said it was to be a “veritable who’s who of documentary filmmaking.” Exciting! Read more