Zimmerman is an artist, cultural activist and filmmaker. She grew up on a large council estate in Munich and left school at 16. After moving to London in 1991, she studied at Central St. Martins. She is a co-founder of the artists' collectives Fugitive Images and Vision Machine. Her collaborative feature drama Cycle (forthcoming) with Adrian Jackson (Cardboard Citizens) was the winner of the Artangel Open Award 2014.
Andrea Zimmerman's work deals with issues and whilst not dealing directly with global warming her work does explore the impact of globalisation, power structures, militarism and denied histories. She celebrates strategies of social and cultural resistance and proposes new ways of living together in the face of a threatened idea of the ‘common good'.
A good example of her work is Zimmerman’s her film Estate, a Reverie (2015). The film follows the long drawn out closure of the Haggerston Estate in East London and the utopian promise of social housing it once offered. Zimmerman has been a resident on the estate herself for 17 years and filmed over a huge seven year time scale. Zimmerman was aware the demolition was in the cards and never sought to make a film about the estate but then started questioning that it was not just the buildings that would be lost. In an interview with London Calling website by Marina Nenadic she sums this "I thought: what is it that we’re going to let go of now? There were all these kinds of community engagements and people who have been there forever and the beautiful friendships that form. I wanted to show the life that was there, before it went for good."
Estate, a Reverie to me reveals the plucky everyday humanity and resilience of residents who are generally constantly overlooked by media representations and wider social responses. The film is excellent in portraying the complex relationships between people and the conditions in which they find themselves. It constantly asks the viewer how we might resist and challenge the stereotypes of class, gender, ability, disability and geography.
Zimmerman again sums this up perfectly in the London calling interview and the social conscience behind her work, "it’s not just about housing but also about access to social services when you’re disabled or severely ill and elderly. You will see in the film that people really struggle to get any help at all. So it’s not just rent in itself but also the social structures around it. The cuts happen because people are invisible. Elderly people are invisible, disabled people are invisible. You’re aware that there are people living by very small means, and they create a real life from that, but all of that is impossible by this situation we face now in which all affordable housing is unaffordable. To have a dignified, decent life in which they don’t have to fit into a certain age or ability bracket is almost impossible in Hackney in the future as I see it."
I really enjoyed the film humanism in the film and the quiet way it went about making its points, you never felt like they were being force fed to you and were all wrapped up in the community, characters and stories from of the contributors. In her own words "Community is made up of real diversity and difference and co-existence and generosity, and that’s hopefully what this film shows. I want them to see a celebration and refusal to just be a person with not many means, because everyone has so much richness so I want them to see these communities that are often so unseen or unrecognised."
The film is punctuated by the poetic words at the start and end and the historical through lines about the area, its inhabitants and the history written about it. The only misstep is the historical re-enactment which to me does not fit. In my opinion. The spray painting of estate and the music also all enhance the piece and lift it beyond it's humble stories and surroundings.
The use of huge photos of the past tenant inhabitants over the boarded up windows of the abandoned flats was particularly poignant. Further research and an excellent piece my Nela Milic in Art and the city sheds some light on this. Milic reveals that this was a separate piece of work that Zimmerman created with the residents called "I am here" 2009. Hackney council made them take it down but the statement in real life and on film was very clear and simple. The portraits flew in the face of the abandoned, derelict worthless, labels that Hackney council had put on the estate and demonstrated that real people lived there and that they were proud of that.
It is shot with no frills yet has a real inner beauty swaying between keeping you as the viewer as an outsider forced to look in but than also at times fully enveloped in the lives and struggle of the characters and their struggle. The joy of the film is the time we get to see the people on the estate and live with them. They may sometimes play for the camera but generally we see them simply exist and this must be due to Zimmerman's relationship to them and the trust she has built up. She gets us close up access to this "Walled city" and the many characters in it. When "strangers" of various guises come for some poverty tourism we agree with the community that we do not want them there as we feel in the inner circle. Zimmerman's sympathetic and honest approach never makes us feel that we indulging in poverty tourism ourselves. There is an honesty about the camerawork it is no frills and just recorded interfering very little with the action and generally still.
The film also has a poetry about it and an honesty, and even though it is very obviously subjective it is forgiven for shining a light on characters who all too often have a voice. The film allows the viewer to empathise with their situation by providing a window into their world and the struggles that we have all and injustices that we all feel from time to time. Through this it manages to show the extraordinary in the ordinary of their lives and issues. It is a heartfelt piece and you do get a sense that as Zimmerman herself puts it "Estate has not been made about this community, but has been made from it. ".
To me the film demonstrates that there are stories in very neighbourhood, behind every front door and engaging characters too. I can be too obsessed with style but the simple honesty of the camerawork here gives the story and the characters and integrity. They never feel contrived, over the top or lampooned and are always given the time and space to be and scratch beneath the skin of their characters and story.
Below is an excellent discussion about the film from the BFI.
http://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/560eb7cb09d68
Estate, a Reverie, 83mins, 2015 (Trailer) from Andrea Luka Zimmerman on Vimeo.
The themes of Estate, a Reverie resonate through a great deal of Zimmermans other films. Taskafa, Stories of the Street (2013), is a film about survival and co-existence told through the lives of the street dogs of Istanbul and the citizens who care for them. Despite several major attempts by Istanbul´s rulers, politicians and planners over the last 400 years to exterminate them, the city´s street dogs have persisted thanks to an enduring alliance with widespread civilian communities, which recognise and defend their right to co-exist. The film opens a window on the contested relationships between power and the public, community and categorisation (in location and identity), and the ongoing struggle / resistance against a single way of seeing and being. It is structured around and voiced by the late writer and storyteller John Berger from his own novel King: A Street Story (1988).
The film is about street dogs but this story provides a window in to see other issues, people, characters, politics and social issues in Istanbul at the same time just like Estate did. A Savage online magazine article captures this well "Andrea Zimmerman’s essay film looks at the economic and political state of Turkey through the stories of Istanbul’s street dogs and the community that fosters them. Zimmerman’s editing effortlessly blends the real and surreal to demonstrate people’s harmonious co-existence with dogs, cats and birds. Her collage of testimonials illustrates the inexplicable bond between people and animals: they are as much part of the city as the streets’ cobblestones, or the bricks that make up buildings.
The style is really interesting as we are often given a dogs eye view of the street which research shows was hard to do. Early attempts to fit cameras on the dogs failed so it was left to the he cinematographer to film on a low slung body mount. The filming was still possible though as the dogs were very used to human interaction and soon got used to the rig. In her book New Political Animals Sophie Mayer describes the effect of this view point. "Zimmerman develops a low-angle, blurred "dogs eye view" to make Taskafa a participant in, as well as object of discussion, and there are often at least as many dogs as humans on screen. Human behaviour is viewed in the ethical context of its companionship or otherwise to the squares dogs". We are made to feel empathy with the dogs and the dogs a representative of the communities as a whole in Turkey.
The film is a reminder that we cannot be separated from nature, despite the efforts of politicians and city planners to create increasingly empty and formulaic environments. In the film the people and communities contribute “They came here before us”, utters an interviewee. “I know the history. People came after. Humans, we kill people; animals, we destroy. Is there anything more savage than that?”.
I found the film about memory and the most necessary sense of us all, belonging, through a search for the role played in the city by Istanbul´s street dogs and their relationship to its human populations. Both the street dogs and the people who l care for them as with as Estate it provide a window to examine the extremes of human life and the extraordinary power of people and community.
Taşkafa, stories of the street, 66min, 2013 / trailer from Andrea Luka Zimmerman on Vimeo.
What I will take forward from Anrea Zimmerman into my own work.
- The honesty of her camera and no frills approach. It looks like it is all shot in natural light and this with the camerawork and sound gives it an honest and real feel. The baggy framing allows the contributors to inhabit their spaces and for us to drink in the details of the minutiae of their lives.
- Building the amazing rapport she has with her participants. Be they humans or dogs!
- The way she addresses the politics not as a full frontal assault but through her subjects. they make the points and she simply gives them a platform to do that.
- Her humanist spirit. The films are about people (or dogs) the issues are their circumstances.
- The spending time with the subject matter. Estate was shot over 7 years. Time can allow a story to play and unfold.
- The realisation that stories are everywhere. they do not have to be sensational they are happening in your street, neighbourhood and although smaller can be just as if not more interesting.
- Her work is real mood pieces. There is an understated flow and mood that creeps into every frame. The general views of the surroundings and life just going on in both films greatly contribute to this.
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