Born in Australia in 1981, the filmmaker and artist Quentin Miller has been based in the Netherlands since 2012. His focus on film developed out of video installations and from writing and designing for literary publications. He often makes comedies which depict alienated characters struggling with language, truth, time and history. Diverse experiences of language are a strong feature of his films. “Although his work may seem ironic at times,” one reviewer wrote, “it is characterised by a romanticism and razor-sharp lightness.”
What was your starting point for „Koki, Ciao“?
I’ve had a lifelong fascination with stories told from the point of view of animals. „Balthazar“ (1966) is my absolute favourite. But writing or narrating in words as an animal – even when great writers do it, like Virginia Woolf’s novel „Flush“ (1933) – always has an aspect of ventriloquism. I’ve always wanted to make a project to see whether it’s possible to do it differently. With this film, the idea was to work rigorously with the real voice of a speaking bird and “Koki, Ciao” is the autobiography of Koki, a parrot who’s way older than me and might answer your question very differently.
It took many years of searching for the perfect bird – I tried working with other parrots with little chemistry or success. In 2020, I met Koki, who is a type of cockatoo I grew up around. I was amazed by his vocabulary, personality and theatrics. Koki had been at the center of Tito’s diplomacy on the Brijuni Islands, a group of islands off the Istrian peninsula with animals who arrived as state-defining symbols during the time of the Non-Aligned movement. So Koki’s position is not only between species, but between states. As I went through the tens of thousands of archival photos, I started to find pictures of a white cockatoo not only with Tito and Jovanka Broz, but with Sukarno, the Ceaușescus, Elisabeth Taylor and many others. Like the geopolitical narrators of Yoko Tawada’s Memoirs of a Polar Bear (2016), Koki is a very dislocated kind of speaking-state-animal.
Over many years I listened to and played with Koki, visiting him in Brijuni where he is publicly caged for tourists. Fortunately my initial request to go into the cage with a crew was turned down, so I embarked on a slower, parrot-centered process. Koki’s large vocabulary, and his sense of theatricality and timing as an entertainer were fine tuned over decades – he’s 67 years old. Although being caged and gawked at wasn’t his choice, his diplomatic role meant he absolutely had the skills to work as an actor and co-writer. I selected names, footage and images that were shown to Koki to see what associations and reactions he might have. Coincidentally, Koki was used to seeing and hearing audiovisual material that tourists and school groups play to him on their phones, and we were able to create the film out of Koki’s narration and investigations.
Do you have a favorite moment in the film? Which one and why this one in particular?
I’m happy with the rhythm of the sections we called Koki’s monologues, especially the part with the dogs. Also, one of my favorite moments that didn’t make the cut was whenKoki would say a phrase to someone, for example, „come here”, and then the recipient, instead of going to Koki, would say “haha, sounds like Koki says come here” and then Koki responds “bye” and they go “hahaha, sounds like he says bye” as Koki exits. I often make wry comedies, but I felt this specific kind of laughter was something entirely different, like an automatic defense mechanism, activated when the border between human and non-human becomes blurred. Even now the film is finished it’s fascinating to see how humans hear or listen or reject Koki’s narration, and this mysterious process of people hearing animals hearing people.
What do you like about the short form?
There are so many types of time. Koki led the choice to make this a short; we wondered how long a human audience could keep up with his narration. Birds can move fast and repetitiously, maybe based on their freedom of movement. At the moment I’m writing with characters who have a condition that makes them do things slowly.
Pacing things over 90-120 minutes can squash or draw out experience, in a way that makes diverse experiences of duration invisible. This applies to all forms and characters, but a cut-to-size nature documentary seems especially out of sync with the many weird experiences of time in the anthropocene, a time that’s now become terminal. So shorts offer one way to take back time, whatever that leads to in human chronos units.
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INTERVIEWS
radio interview with Quenton Miller and Knut Elstermann for rbb radioeins
„Le film est une autobiographie de Koki, un cacatoès. C’est venu de mon amour pour les livres racontés par des animaux et de mon horreur doublée d’un malaise vis-à-vis de la façon dont les animaux sont souvent représentés dans les documentaires „
Interview with Quenton Miller for Le Polyester
PRESS REVIEWS
„Währenddessen holten zwei dokumentarische Kurzfilme die Hauptawards: Quentin Miller erhielt den Berlinale Shorts CUPRA Filmmaker Award für KOKI, CIAO und LLOYD WONG, UNFINISHED von Lesley Loksi Chan bekam höchstverdient den Goldenen Bären verliehen. Während die Animationsfilme Gegenwart stilisierten und auseinandernahmen, blickten die Dokumentarfilme mit großem Gewinn in die Vergangenheit, verfremdet natürlich.“
mention by Marie Ketzscher for Berliner Filmfestivals
„Koki was no average cockatoo but was in fact Josip Broz Tito’s (leader of Yugoslavia, 1944-1980) personal pet! Mixing static frames à La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962) with footage of the animal himself, well past 60 as he shouts “Tito! Tito!” in his enclosure in the Croatian Brijuni islands, Miller’s film is light on its feet but fascinating in content — especially as the cutie Koki might not be all he seems…“
review by Redmond Bacon for Journey into Cinema
„Ideas of unreliability are […] touched upon in the quirky but thought-provoking Koki, Ciao by Quenton Miller (Netherlands), in which the cockatoo belonging to former Yugoslav president Tito becomes a narrator of history and a possible revealer of secrets.“
mention by Laurence Boyce for Cineuropa
„Experimentell und überraschend ist auch der Film Koki, Ciao, in dem der Erzähler ein Kakadu ist. Koki ist dabei nicht irgendein sprechender Vogel, sondern gehörte dem jugoslawischen Staatschef Tito und war für die Unterhaltung seiner diplomatischen Gäste verantwortlich. Gefangen in einem kleinen Käfig und ausgestellt im Zoo, ist der 67-jährige Koki noch heute eine Touristenattraktion sowie ein Erinnerungsort des vergangenen Jugoslawiens, mit dem die Besucher*innen in Interaktion treten.“
mention by Peter Bratenstein for zeitgeschichte online
„Koki, Ciao von Quenton Miller, der den neuen CUPRA Filmmaker Award erhalten hat, beschäftigt sich in ironisch-grotesker Weise mit einem sprechenden weißen Kakadu namens Koki, der einst dem jugoslawischen Regierungschef Tito gehörte.“
mention by Isabel Roy & Verena Nees for World Socialist Web Site
„Co-written and narrated by Koki, the 67-year-old speaking cockatoo formerly owned by Tito, leader of Yugoslavia for 35 years, this film is a short experimental documentary and autobiography, featuring a non-human as its central creative figure.“
mention by Curation Hour
„In Koki, Ciao by Quenton Miller Koki, the famous talking cockatoo, gives insights into his life with Tito, the long-time president of Yugoslavia whose country residence was regularly frequented by political figures, dictators and movie stars. The short film celebrates its international premiere in Berlin, the world premier took place in Rotterdam at IFFR.“
mention by SEE NL
„Den erstmals vergebenen Preis des neuen Berlinale-Sponsors Cupra erhielt Quenton Millers „Koki, Ciao“.“
mention by blickpunkt:film
„Der australische Regisseur Quenton Miller konnte sich mit seinem experimentellen dokumentarischen Kurzfilm „Koki, Ciao“ bei der dreiköpfigen Internationalen Kurzfilmjury, bestehend aus dem vietnamesischen Regisseur Pham Ngoc Lân, der dänischen Kurzfilmexpertin Jing Haase und der deutschen Filmkomponistin Dascha Dauenhauer, durchsetzen. Als erster Preisträger nahm er den neuen Award am Samstag im Berlinale Palast entgegen.“
mention by flotte.de
reactions on letterboxd
Berlinale Shorts 