Welcome to Kandos | TV & film

Welcome to Kandos

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25.01.2022 You keep meaning to but it slips your mind so here's a reminder that you can view the film for FREE on a 7-day trial on Beamafilm! Check out the trailer: http://bit.ly/1OyHOql

22.01.2022 Here's a reminder that you can view the film for FREE on a 7-day free trial on beamafilm! Check out the trailer: http://bit.ly/1OyHOql

19.01.2022 Mixing Art with Resistance Review of Welcome to Kandos By Joanna Pocock Fran Tinley and Justin Hewitson’s 30-minute documentary, Welcome to Kandos, is a sensitive reminder that change, whether we like it or not, is inevitable. It tells the story of the small, rural town of Kandos in Australia, which until 2011 was a cement-producing town. Tales from residents tell of picking dust-covered fruit from trees whose branches were white from the fine limestone powder. Cement Austra...lia blamed the high Australian dollar and a new carbon tax for the closure of the plant. They gave their employees a mere four months’ notice before locking the factory gates, leaving many of the townspeople not only shocked but out of work. Enter Ann Finnegan, Alex Wisser and Georgie Pollard, three artists who are taken in by the charm of the town and set up something called Kandos Projects. As Darryl Brown, a local artist and co-owner with his partner of the Brown Owl Gallery says, When Kandos Projects came to town, the fast-forward button was pressed. Like minds began to congregate and conspire, and Cementa13, a four-day arts festival, was born. The film examines how locals who are more at home making quilts might react to some of the slightly outlandish artworks in the festival from a blue stripe in the grass representing the lines at the bottom of a swimming pool to a life-size UFO. What transpires is some serious self-examination on both sides of the divide and a meeting in the middle for many artists and residents who have had their worldviews challenged. One initially sceptical middle-aged resident recalls after the festival, that the experience was enlightening. Another adds that it made her and others stop, look, and think. Wisser, one of the festival organisers is clear that he is under no illusions that Kandos can be saved by art. Yet what an arts festival in an unlikely place can do is give validity to dreams. If you’ve managed to make one small impossible dream come true, then how about all those others you have waiting in the wings. Although Welcome to Kandos puts itself forward as a small film, its subject matter is timely and profound. While many parts of the world from Wales and Wyoming to Kandos and Kentucky rely on the extraction industries to keep their inhabitants in jobs and the world full of iphones and cars, there is another reality telling us that this cannot continue. That reality of course is the environment and its degradation through extraction and consumerism. While Tinley and Hewitson don’t come out and say it, this intelligent gem of a film shows another way of tackling the crisis of dead towns once their lifeblood has been sucked away: that of injecting it with art and vision. And the makers of this film get their point across with humanity and a very light touch. (470 words)

18.01.2022 Great screening at TiNA - This Is Not Art festival in Newcastle with Alex Wisser

05.01.2022 Welcome to Kandos screens on Foxtel Arts this Wednesday 11th May @ 6.25pm You can view the trailer here http://www.beamafilm.com/welcometokandos/ and to view online just click WATCH FOR FREE on the link.