Having worked on 'The Polygon' for the last six years, actress Kimberley Joseph is finally coming back home to unveil her documentary at the Gold Coast Film Festival this week.
Avid TV junkies will most likely recognise Kimberley Joseph from her stint on 'Lost', where she played Cindy the flight attendant. You might even remember her career in the '90s, having seen her in shows like 'Home And Away' and 'Gladiators'. Lately, however, Kimberley's been off the screen and off the radar, spending her time filming 'The Polygon' in Kazakhstan.
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'The Polygon' documents the plight of Kazakh villagers living just 18 kilometres from the titular Polygon, a former Soviet nuclear test site, and how they struggle to cope with the aftereffects of long term exposure to radiation. The documentary is Kimberley's labour of love, a project she's focused on since 2008, and after six years of hard work 'The Polygon' is finally finished.
“It's had many incarnations, so this is probably the third cut that I've made,” Kimberley says. “It had to feel right for me. I remember saying, 'I'll film this really fast,' and anybody who had done a documentary knows it usually takes an awful lot longer than that.”
Kimberley's travels during filming took her to Kazakhstan three times and also included a visit to Moscow to review archival footage of the village before and after the nuclear testing. In the course of her travels, Kimberley witnessed a series of confronting images, although she claims the unseen side-effects of the fallout were the hardest to deal with.
“There'd be a kid playing soccer and all of a sudden he's collapsed and has to have a bone marrow transplant,” she recalls. “There's all sorts of issues that they're dealing with.”
Kimberley's main motivation in making 'The Polygon' was to get the word out about such issues, which have been swept under the rug and largely ignored by the public; she cites incidents such as Chernobyl and Fukushima as widely known disasters but laments the fact that the story of the Kazakh people has not been told until now.
While the screening of 'The Polygon' at this year's Gold Coast Film Festival marks the documentary's official world premiere, an early 13-minute long cut of the film (then titled 'When The Dust Settles') opened the festival in 2009. Since then, Kimberley has received much support from the GCFF and its board members for her work on 'The Polygon', thus her decision to show her film at the festival once more, albeit in its final form.
“I'm excited and a little nervous to show it, because ultimately when we show it at the festival it'll be the first time anyone's really seen it. It'll be the first time we've exposed it in front of an audience.”
When asked about a possible return to acting following over half a decade's work on 'The Polygon', Kimberley responds: “Never say never.” She is very open to taking on the “right role” and also the possibility of once again performing in an Australian production.
'The Polygon' will premiere this Friday April 11 at 7:00pm at Event Cinemas Pacific Fair as part of the Gold Coast Film Festival. Kimberley will also be hosting a Q&A session directly after the film. 
