Andrea Luka Zimmerman is aJarman Award winning artist, filmmaker and cultural activist whose work focuses on aspects ofworking class experience, and that of people margnalised by mainstream society, that are seldom seen or discussed. Andrea works across media in a committed and heightened register that allows those lives portrayed their full representation beyond simple and reductive definitions of economy, geography and gender.[1][2][3]
In Dec 2024,Second Run Films released a 2-disc Blu-ray special edition of their films. This includesTaşkafa, Stories of the Street (2013),Estate, a Reverie (2015),Erase and Forget (2017) andHere for Life (2019), a selection of their acclaimed shorts and a 48 page booklet with writing from Gareth Evans,Penny Woolcock,Ali Smith, So Mayer, Adrian Jackson, Andrea Zimmerman andJohn Berger. Alongside this, the British Film Institute presented the UK premiere ofWayfaring Stranger (2024) anda season dedicated to their work.
Andrea Luka Zimmerman grew up on several large public housing estates, including the Wohnring inNeuperlach, Germany, and left school at 16. After moving to London in 1991, Andrea studied atCentral Saint Martins, where she graduated with a BA in 1997 and a PhD (Secreting History: Spectral and Spectacular Representations of Political Violence) in 2006.
Andrea co-founded the film collectiveVision Machine (collaborators on Academy Award-nominated feature documentaryThe Look of Silence).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.[9]
Zimmerman co-founded the cultural collective Fugitive Images, alongside Lasse Johansson and David Roberts in 2009.[10]
Zimmerman's filmTaskafa, Stories of the Street (2013) explores resistance and co-existence through the lives of the street dogs of Istanbul.[13][14] Featuring text and readings byJohn Berger,Taskafa gathers the voices of diverse Istanbul residents, shopkeepers, and street based workers, all of whom display a striking commitment to the wellbeing and future of the city's canine population (a community of street dogs, and cats, free of formal ownership but fed and cared for by numerous individuals). It also references theHayırsızada Dog Massacre of 1911 atSivriada.
Estate, a Reverie (2015) was made over seven years and tracks the passing of theHaggerston Estate in East London and the utopian promise of social housing it once offered, with a celebration of everyday humanity. It is held in theArts Council Collection. On the occasion of its Bluray release in 2024, Jimmy Dean wrote: "This is thoughtful filmmaking that captures the texture of real people, collaborating closely with them to vividly realise their stories. Zimmerman creates a grand sense of history – collating wide-ranging stories, mapping generations born under the same roof and the immediate here and now to allow us to understand the make-up of the estate. My heart breaks at the reality for those left behind, rehoused without thought, in favour of what? It’s a film that is always mining for human truth and thinking about the human cost. As with the best films that capture the human spirit, there’s so much warmth and love packed in, bursting out from within the bleakness. This is one of the most powerful films I’ve seen this year. I absolutely loved getting to know all of the residents, this is a film made with urgency and with great care and it stands out as one of the most special films I’ve experienced in 2024."[15]
Erase and Forget (2017) 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.[16] It premiered at the 2017 Berlin Film Festival[17] and was released in UK cinemas in 2018. David Jenkins in Little White Lies said "Some may see this as a definitive film of America under Trump."[18]
Here for Life (2019) is a long term collaboration with theatre-maker and founder ofCardboard 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. Kieron Corless, Sight & Sound called it "A film of great compassion and political and aesthetic ambition, in which the idea of a collective is prioritized for a change, but without sacrificing or downplaying the individual voices and idiosyncrasies that it comprises".[19] The film was widely and warmly received and notably moved in its reception beyond filmgoing audiences.Lemn Sissay wrote, "I just wanted to share the vastness of this beautiful piece of work with people".[20]
Wayfaring Stranger (2024) asks what it takes to find a liveable life on one’s own terms and without conflict with others and the environment. It charts the life of an itinerant character, embodied by seven performers, across seven days, representing seven decades.Wayfaring Stranger had its world premiere at the Rotterdam Film Festival on 25 January 2024, and its UK premiere at theBFI in London on 7 December 2024, with a Q&A hosted by artistLarry Achiampong. Marc van de Klashorst wrote: 'Hypnotic, introspective, and with a bewildering soundscape that pits the natural world against its manmade enemies,Wayfaring Stranger is a mesmerizing yet haunting journey through our relationship with ourselves and the world we live in.' Also 'Wayfaring Stranger is an immersive and contemplative work of singular cinema of the kind the world sadly sees far too little.[21]
Art exhibitions and projects includei am here, a public artwork inHaggerston, 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'".[22]Real Estates (co-curated with David Roberts), PEER withLUX, London (2015), was a multifaceted project around issues of housing, social justice and public space in East London.Common Ground, Spike Island, Bristol (2017) comprised an exhibition, screening, talks and discussions around strategies of social and cultural resistance and ways of living together.[23]Civil Rites (2017) was made in response to a speech on the interlinked nature of "war, poverty, racism" given byMartin Luther King Jr. at Newcastle University, and was first shown atTyneside Cinema Gallery in Newcastle in 2017/18, and London Open triennial atWhitechapel Gallery in 2018.Art Class (2020), a filmed performance lecture exploring the tension between the words in its title, proposing a multylayered social dreaming, premiered at the 2020 Filmlondon Jarman Award[24] and has been shown internationally, mostly accompanied by conversations, including with Morgan Quaintance.[25]
Andrea highlights collaborative and engaged ways of working, alongside dangers posed by extractive industry practices, in the AnthologyStrangers Within: Documentary as Encounter,[26] and also inBelow the Radar: Episode 136: Experimental Documentary Practices in conversation with Am Johal. During the2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Zimmerman curated a season of films forLoneliness Awareness Week, with Birds Eye View. She wrote aboutVěra Chytilová's film Daisies, highlighting the 'invigorating rigour that Daisies brings to my perception of reality'[27] and also for the Harun Farocki Institute asked 'what does it mean to consider the lives of others?'.[28]
The Delmarva Chicken of Tomorrow (short, 2003)[29]
The Globalisation Tapes (2003)[30] (additional editor and camera)[31] a collaboration between the Independent Plantation Workers' Union of Sumatra, the International Union of Food and Agricultural Workers (IUF), and Vision Machine
The Last Biscuit (short, 2005)[32] a collaboration with Paul Hallam
Contribution inStrangers Within:Documentary as Encounter: ed. Therese Henningsen and Juliette Joffee, 2022, Prototype, London, pp. 65–78.ISBN978-1-913513-30-6.
Co-author ofEstate: Art, Politics and Social Housing in Britain: Myrdle Court Press, 2010ISBN978-0-9563539-2-4.
Contribution inTruth, Dare or Promise: Art and Documentary Revisited. London & New York: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013, (Edited by Gail Pearce, Jill Daniels, Cahal McLaughlin)ISBN9781443849593.
Featured inWith Dogs At The Edge of Life: Columbia University Press, 2015, Colin DayanISBN9780231167123.
Featured inPolitical Animals: The New Feminist Cinema: I.B. Tauris, 2016, So MayerISBN0857729942.
Featured inThe Routledge Companion to Cinema and Politics: edited by Yannis Tzioumakis, Claire Molloy, 2016ISBN978-0415717397.
Featured inNon-Cinema: Global Digital Film-making and the Multitude, William Brown, 2018,ISBN9781501327292.
Featured inOther Modernities in conversation with Caterina Sartori, Università degli Studi di Milano, 2018,ISSN2035-7680.
Contribution to and co-editor ofDoorways: Women, Homelessness, Trauma and Resistance - Shiri Shalmy and Andrea Luka Zimmerman on cultural production under capitalism and the role of art and artists in a social crisis, House Sparrow Press, 2019[58]
Contribution in Annual Art Journal ISSUE 08, ERASE,On Erasure, Lasalle College of the Arts, 2019,ISSN2315-4802.
Contribution inAnother Gaze, a Feminist Film Journal, Vol 04,Otherwise: Notes on Being Perennially In-Between, pp. 30–35, 2020ISSN2516-3876.
Contribution inBrick 113,In the Present Tense: Diary of the Days to Come, pp. 9–22.
Contribution in Journal for Creative Arts, Unlikely vol09,From A-Z: an Alphabetarium ofResistance ISSN 2205-0027
Andrea Luka Zimmerman Interview - Here For Life, Studio International, 2019[59]
Secreting History - Screening 'History': 21 takes in "La Furia Umana" LFU/36,[60] April 2019
Text for the Living School publication, conceived and ed. by Brandon LaBelle (for South London Gallery), 2018.
Co-existence: A modest proposal for preventing the street dogs of Istanbul from being a burden on their neighbourhoods and citizenry, in SEQUENCE New Artists' Film and Video, Vol 4., ed. Simon Payne, no.w.here, 2016, pp. 36–38
Estates of Being: Thoughts on the place of living and working, Focaalblog, 2015[61]
Human Conditions: the Lives of Estate/s in "La Furia Umana", April 2015[62]
Amsler; Pinder; Hope; Owen; Roberts; Shah; Zimmerman; Theron Schmidt; a response to Beyond Glorious, the Radical in Engaged Practices, Rajni Shah; in 'CTR Backpages 24.2', Contemporary Theatre Review, Routledge, Vol. 24, No. 2, 284–299, May 2014
The Certainty of Uncertainty (Zimmerman / Roberts), in "London's Regeneration Realities", ed. Ben Campkin, David Roberts, Rebecca Ross. Urban Lab, 12/2013
Truth, Dare or Promise: Art and Documentary Revisited. (text and image):Homeland (In)Securities, ed Jill Daniels, Cahal McLaughlin and Gail Pearce, Cambridge Scholars, 11/2013
On common ground: the making of meaning in film and life, Open Democracy, 2013[63]
Estate in three Parts. Text, Image and moving image for The Home and The World, Dartington, online publication, 10/2013
Thinking in Practice, Balmond Studio. Re-imagining Council Housing, Q&As. Andrea Luka Zimmerman and David Roberts respond to Alisha Haridasani. September 5, 2013.
Come Together, (text and image) Signes du Nuit, June 2013.
Homecultures, (peer reviewed text and photo essay) Zimmerman / Johansson, Berg, 2011
Estate: Art, Politics and Social Housing in Britain. Myrdle Court Press, ed. and photography by Zimmerman / Johansson, with Tristan Fennell, Paul Hallam, Victor Buchli, Cristina Cerulli, launched during TINAG [This is not a Gateway] festival, Oct. 2010. Second edition August 2012.
2010:In Wait, Visual essay in Estate: Art, Politics and Social Housing in Britain (Zimmerman, Johansson, Fennell) Myrdle Court Press.
Street Signs. Zimmerman / Johansson, Centre for Urban and Community Research, Goldsmiths, University, spring, 2010
I AM HERE: some thoughts on site-specificity and instrumentality. Site Specific Art. Zimmerman / Johansson, December 2009
