Andrea Luka Zimmerman


Andrea Luka Zimmerman is an artist, filmmaker and cultural activist whose work unveils aspects of working class experience, and that of people living on the margins of society, that are seldom seen or discussed. Using imaginative hybridity and narrative re-framing, alongside reverie and a creative waywardness, the work prioritises an enduring and equitable co-existence, and there is often a focus on the importance of social bonds within these communities. Films include the Artangel produced Here For Life, winning Special Mention at the Cineasti Del Presente international competition of the 72nd Locarno Film Festival, 2019, Erase and Forget, world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, Estate, a Reverie and Taskafa, Stories of the Street which was written and voiced by John Berger. She is a Reader at Central Saint Martins.

Life and career

Andrea Luka Zimmerman grew up on several large public housing estates, including the Wohnring in Neuperlach, Germany, and left school at 16. After moving to London in 1991, she studied at Central Saint Martins for a PhD. She co-founded the film collective Vision Machine. Vision Machine was created in 2001 as an experimental filmmaking collective with the aim to research, analyse and respond to the conditions and mechanisms of economic, political and military power. Its members were Christine Cynn, Joshua Oppenheimer, Michael Uwemedimo, Andrea Luka Zimmerman. Zimmerman co-founded the cultural collective Fugitive Images, alongside Lasse Johansson and David Roberts in 2009.
File:Andrea-Luka-Zimmerman-director-Here-For-Life-RTF-screening-Rio-Dalston-cinema-London-portrait-by-WIZ-19th-Feb-2020-0020.jpg|thumb|Andrea Luka Zimmerman, , W.I.Z.|| Andrew "Wiz" Whiston, 2020
Zimmerman's film Taskafa, Stories of the Street explores resistance and co-existence through the lives of the street dogs of Istanbul. Estate, a Reverie was made over seven years and tracks the passing of the Haggerston Estate in East London and the utopian promise of social housing it once offered, with a celebration of everyday humanity. Erase and Forget was made over ten years and, through a documentary portrait of "Bo Gritz" explores the limits of deniability and social conscience in an age of constant warfare. It premiered at the 2017 Berlin Film Festival. ' is a long term collaboration with theatre-maker and CEO of Cardboard Citizens, Adrian Jackson. The film follows ten Londoners through a city framed by capital and loss, as they navigate their wild and wayward way, travelling on their own terms towards a co-existence far stronger than 'community'. On reclaimed land they find themselves on the right side of history, caught between two train tracks, the present tense and future hopes. They question who has stolen what from whom, and how things might be fixed, in an often contradictory rite of passage. Finding solidarity in resistance, they demand the right to go on.
Art exhibitions and projects include , a public artwork in Haggerston, Hackney, which was made in response to the experience of living on a council estate which was being gentrified. For this, large photos of residents from the estate were placed over the windows of vacated flats, with the intention of opening up a "reflective space concerning issues about visibility and 'urban regeneration'." ', PEER with LUX, London, was a multifaceted project around issues of housing, social justice and public space in East London. , Spike Island, Bristol comprised an exhibition, screening, talks and discussions around strategies of social and cultural resistance and ways of living together. Civil Rites was made in response to a speech on the interlinked nature of "war, poverty, racism" given by Martin Luther King at Newcastle University, and was first shown at Tyneside Cinema Gallery in Newcastle in 2017/18, and at Whitechapel Gallery in 2018.
During the 2020 Covid 19 Lockdown, Zimmerman curated this for Loneliness Awareness Week, with Birds Eye View. She wrote about Věra Chytilová's film Daisies, highlighting the 'invigorating rigour that Daisies brings to my perception of reality' and also for the Harun Farocki Institute asked 'what does it mean to consider the lives of others?'.

Filmography

Books