Tikimentary: In Search of the Lost Paradise

This documentary portrait of Bosko Hrnjak follows the artist through his childhood in Los Angeles, education at Art Center College of Design and his unsung, pioneering work as the first individual to revive the lost art of carving Tikis, sculpting Tiki ceramics and building the first proper home Tiki bar. Based on extensive interviews with Hrnjak and his wife and collaborator Truus de Groot, the film contains further commentary from fellow Polynesian Pop luminaries such as Jeff "Beachbum" Berry and Sven Kirsten.

Organist Korla Pandit was an alluring enigma, a television pioneer and the godfather of exotica music. He never spoke a word on 900 episodes of his groundbreaking 1950s TV program but captured the hearts of countless Los Angeles housewives with his soulful, hypnotic gaze and theatrical performance of popular tunes and East Indian compositions on the newly developed Hammond B3 organ. In the ’90s he resurfaced as a cult figure with the tiki/lounge music aficionados and ended up immortalized in the film Ed Wood. Often pegged as a “man of mystery,” Korla lived up to that billing when he took an amazing secret with him to his grave in 1998—one that is finally revealed in KORLA.

Armchair traveling to the most exotic chapter of American pop culture! Come fly with us and relive the rise and fall of polynesian pop. Be there. See the places and the people. Hear the stories from eye witnesses and real tiki aficionados like Martin Denny, Leroy Schmaltz & Bob van Oosting, Eric Askew, the Bali Hai Boys, Sven Kirsten, Otto von Stroheim, Shag, Beachbum Berry and many more. The DVD OF TIKI, Vol. I “Paradise Lost” explores the origins of the myth of the Souths Seas paradise and follows a nation on their transition from the puritan 1950s to the sexual revolution of the 70s. The Sixties, the heyday of Tiki offered wild island lifestyle with exotic sounds and intoxicating concoctions without endangering the given moral and social rules at that time.

Conceited singer Garry Mitchell refuses to renew his radio contract, so agent Doug Blake decides to find a new personality to replace him. In New York, he finds Martha Gibson, a single mother with a great voice. He arranges for her to move to Hollywood, but then has a problem trying to sell her to the show's sponsor. Doug tries every trick he can think of to make Martha a star, and as the two work more closely, he falls in love with her. Complicating matters further, Martha meets and becomes attracted to Garry.

A treasury agent on the trail of counterfeit money confides to fellow ocean liner passenger, Charlie Chan, that there have been two attempts on his life.

Carlo Cofield vacations to Southern California, where he quickly becomes immersed in the easy-going local culture, getting entangled in two beachside romances.

After being hired to find an ex-con's former girlfriend, Philip Marlowe is drawn into a deeply complex web of mystery and deceit.

After her great aunt's death, a high-society woman arrives on a Hawaiian island in search of the heir - the father she has never met.

Just discharged GI Chad Gates returns to Hawaii, where he becomes a tour guide, defying his mother's wishes for him to join the family business.

An ailing barrister is thrust back into the courtroom in what becomes one of the most unusual and eventful murder cases of the lawyer's career when he finds himself defending a man being tried for the murder of a socialite.

Having to leave Melbourne in a hurry to avoid various marriage proposals, two song-and-dance men sign on for work as divers. This takes them to an idyllic island on the way to Bali where they vie with each other for the favours of Princess Lala. The hazardous dive produces a chest of priceless jewels which arouses the less romantic interest of some shady locals.

A woman travels to Hawaii to find out if a man in prison there is actually her missing husband.