Experimental Documentary Practices — with Andrea Luka Zimmerman

Award-winning artist, filmmaker, and activist Andrea Luka Zimmerman joins Below the Radar from the UK to speak to us about her approach to making art and films — in deep collaboration, over long periods of time, and always cultivating community. Host Am Johal speaks to Andrea about how her work explores counter-memories to structural violence and how we dream together to build new worlds.

They discuss Andrea’s past and recent works, including Estate, A Reverie, Here for Life, and others, delving into the aesthetics and experimental nature of her work, as well as the political orientation around themes of displacement, gentrification, human rights, and social connection that run through her practice.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/136-andrea-luka-zimmerman.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/136-andrea-luka-zimmerman.html

Register for the free screening of ‘Here for Life’ on October 15 at 5pm: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/here-for-life-film-screening-tickets-170500399284

Resources:
— Fugitive Images https://fugitiveimages.org.uk/about/
— Taskafa, Stories of the Street https://lux.org.uk/work/taskafa-stories-of-the-street
— Estate, a Reverie https://lux.org.uk/work/013429-estate-a-reverie
— Here For Life https://www.artangel.org.uk/project/here-for-life/
— Shelter in Place https://www.estuaryfestival.com/event/detail/shelter-in-place.html

Bio:
Andrea Luka Zimmerman is a Jarman Award winning artist, filmmaker and cultural activist whose multi-layered practice calls for a profound re-imagining of the relationship between people, place and ecology. Focusing on marginalised individuals, communities and experience, the engaged practice employs imaginative hybridity and narrative re-framing, alongside reverie and a creative waywardness. Informed by suppressed histories, and alert to sources of radical hope, the work prioritises an enduring and equitable co-existence. Andrea grew up on a large council estate and left school at 16.
Films include the Artangel-produced 'Here for Life' (2019), which received its world premiere in the Cineasti Del Presente international competition of the Locarno Film Festival (winning a Special Mention), 'Erase and Forget' (2017), premiering at the Berlin Film Festival (nominated for the Original Documentary Award), 'Estate, a Reverie' (2015) (nominated for Best Newcomer at the Grierson awards) and 'Taskafa, Stories of the Street' (2013), written and voiced by the late John Berger.
Selected exhibitions include 'Civil Rites', the London Open, Whitechapel Gallery, 'Common Ground' at Spike Island, Bristol and 'Real Estates' at Peer Gallery. Andrea co-founded the cultural collectives Fugitive Images and Vision Machine (collaborators on Academy Award® nominated feature documentary 'The Look of Silence').
Andrea co-edited the books 'Estate: Art, Politics and Social Housing in Britain' (Myrdle Court Press) and 'Doorways: Women, Homelessness Trauma and Resistance' (House Sparrow Press) and has published extended essays in 'Open Democracy', 'La Furia Umana', ‘Another Gaze’ and 'Homecultures', among others.

Cite this episode:
Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “Experimental Documentary Practices — with Andrea Luka Zimmerman” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, October 5, 2021. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/136-andrea-luka-zimmerman.html