Creating in the Chaos: Kim Miles
by Amelia Leonard
The World Really is W (Kim Miles, 2004)
On a particularly bright Sunday in March, film-lovers opted for the darkness of the cinema to watch MWFF’s shorts strand Artrageous!. Delivering a lineup of avant-garde and experimental films from the mid ’90s to early 2000s, these shorts challenged convention with wit, weirdness, and unabashed creativity, shaped by the energy of third-wave feminism, DIY punk attitude, and the surrealist revival of the time. One of the most magnetic presences in the program was Kim Miles (the filmmaker behind The World Really is W), who’s post screening talk revealed an artist fiercely committed to disrupting the status-quo. Drawn in by her rebellious spirit, I introduced myself, and the following weekend I had the pleasure of talking to Miles in depth about her approach to filmmaking and choosing a creative life.
In recent years, Miles’ has experienced somewhat of a resurgence in the Australian cinema scene. As we continue to reframe our national cinematic history through the lens of female and gender-diverse creators, voices which have historically been pushed to the periphery, her work is receiving renewed attention – a serendipitous turn that is not lost on Miles. “It’s funny, I made most of these films from 2000-2012. There was no support, no pathways, no acknowledgement, and all of a sudden… Bang!” Last year, academic Claire Henry wrote a paper recognising Miles’ non-conformist vision, contextualising it within the trans and gender-diverse landscape, which she presented at the 2024 Screen Studies Association of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand conference. Now here in Melbourne, MWFF has given her work a platform, presenting it to new audiences, and later in the year a retrospective of her work is set to take place in Adelaide.
Stylistically, Miles’ films merge the lo-fi, rudimentary aesthetics associated with punk anarchism with the kind of rejectionist ethos seen in Dogme 95. She resists traditional modes of storytelling and generally shuns the sanitised studio model of accessibility and saleability. "Art stands still if you don't have people breaking rules and moving forward," she says – a belief stitched into the fabric of her filmography. “I think with filmmaking, with art, you've got to like, punch them in the face, right away. You’ve got to grab them. It's not so much sensationalism, but it's feeding the eye and feeding the brain, that's what you've got to do.” It’s a stance that elevates experimentation and play as a key driver in her work, where dialogues emerge from distortion and abstraction rather than overt exposition. “I’m not trying to make sense of things. I’m trying to capture a feeling, or a texture, or some kind of moment that you maybe can’t explain. I hate stories that are like, let’s start here and end here. I don’t care. I don’t think life is like that… Chaos feels more real to me than clarity. I trust it more”.
Screened in the Artrageous! program, The World Really is W – a zany snapshot centring on a cohort of bored office workers – epitomises Miles’ instinctual, improvisational ethos. After landing a casual job with a fellow actor in a Melbourne CBD office, the short film emerged organically, with the use of on-the-fly locations and non-actors unfolding naturally. “We'd finish our work with an hour to spare. I was interviewing actors and casting, and they were painting and doing all sorts of stuff. We used that office.” One of her favourite moments came from spontaneously casting a cleaner and her dog. “Its eyes click open on the beat of the music,” she chuckled – an accidental flourish feeding into her love of rhythm, musicality and unplanned magic. “You've just gotta play and experiment and take risks.”
In terms of editing, there’s a distinct manipulation of temporality that recurs throughout her filmography. Moments and words are repeated, segments are sped up and slowed down. On this she questions, “What happens when you see the same thing five times? Does that do something to your cortex?” Miles relishes the happy accidents. “Most of the time, it turns out to be the most interesting thing in the film. That’s what I love… I just chop, chop, chop, and then something weird and beautiful comes out.” Her method is less about control than it is about letting go. "There’s this little thing called instinct. And if you're not quiet and observant, you'll miss it."
This play with linearity and disruption of real-world time finds a kinship with the dream logic of modern surrealists like David Lynch. “People used to compare my work to his, which I love. He kept that surreal, experimental thing, but made it accessible to a wider audience. Something I feel I can sort of do as well.” She namechecks a number of her much-loved filmmakers. Jane Campion, Derek Jarman, Peter Greenaway, and Abel Ferrara – directors who have reshaped the perimeters of traditional narratives, both in and out of the mainstream. She mentions Antonioni’s abstraction. Even Clint Eastwood gets an honourable mention. “I love a good Clint Eastwood film. Million Dollar Baby... All shadows, all darkness. [He] sculpts with light.”
The refusal to follow the script doesn’t stop at filmmaking. Miles reflected on her early life in suburban Adelaide and her non-linear journey towards authentic embodiment. “Maybe now I am more my – I hate that phrase – ‘authentic self’, but yeah… I was just a suburban kid. But I had the feminine and the masculine [within me]. I had a doll, and occasionally I would dress up in my sister's clothes secretly. I always had that sort of duality." For Miles, her experience with gender is perhaps best viewed as an organic, ongoing evolution rather than a direct transition. "I didn’t know. I thought male and female were the same, because I never felt like a man… then I looked at myself in the mirror and said, ‘If you want to do this, you can do it now.’” But even at the time, she rejected the idea of transition as identity. “When I eventually did something with myself, I didn’t want that to dominate my life. I [didn’t want it to] become a title… Your work doesn’t have to be about being queer. It’s queer in the expression, in the making.”
Alongside her filmmaking – of which she continues to make short vignette-type pieces, uploading them to her YouTube channel Kim Miles Films – she has also worked as an actor, and more recently she’s delved into digital art, creating an ongoing series of manipulated, surrealist portraits. Images that may start as straightforward photographs transform into nightmarish impressions. Facial expressions become fractured and haunted, colours bleed and edges blur. Like her films, the familiar becomes a site for metamorphosis.
Despite unavoidable periods of burnout, Miles’ sustained urgency to create is palpable. She lights up when speaking of her in-development project, a proof-of-concept web series about a trans detective banished to a basement of fellow misfits, a work which promises to push her practice even further. “I think it could be something really big… it’s going to be pushing the boundaries of performance, image and sound.” Though the medium may change, the desire to make, disrupt, and challenge remains constant.
In a country that often overlooks those who venture from convention and safe, palatable expression, this resurgence of underground, experimental work is promising. Perhaps culture is finally catching up – but Kim Miles hasn’t been idly waiting to be discovered. Instead, her persistence and magnetism has drawn the right audiences toward her. Something I hope, and trust, will only continue to build. “I stuck with it,” she tells me. “I haven't said, 'I'll give up being an artist. I'll go and get a job in a bakery and bake bread’ or something like that. Sometimes people forget. You've got a long life, a career is a long thing.”
You can find out more about Kim Miles’ work on her Youtube and her Instagram.