The soft, lilting chimes of a music box begin to play, a lullaby coaxing us to slumber. Though in Robina Rose’s Nightshift, we witness little sleeping. Entering a liminal space of arrivals and departures, a threshold between sleep and wakefulness, we are greeted by iconic punk fashionista Jordan Mooney (née Pamela Rooke). Best known for her work with Derek Jarman, here she is cast as an impassive hotel receptionist. With a porcelain-white visage, she surveys the lobby as a procession of transient guests drift by, whiling away the hours with a litany of nightly duties. Rose captures with evocative precision the monotony of hospitality work, particularly women’s unseen labour, whilst also offering an escape from that tedium, pulling us into a hazy dreamlike realm where time slows and stretches. Nightshift is a spellbinding ode to nighthawks and night workers.

~ Alice Miller

Robina Rose was born in 1951 to Danish and German parents and grew up in Notting Hill, London. After leaving school, she became a Film projectionist at the Arts Lab on Drury Lane, Covent Garden. Rose graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1977, where she did camera work on Celestino Coronado’s Hamlet starring Helen Mirren and Quentin Crisp. Rose was awarded a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) fellowship and moved to Berlin, where she was later invited to teach at the German Film and Television Academy (DFFB) and remained there for the rest of the 1980s. On her return from Berlin she worked for the Community Programme Unit of the BBC.

Nightshift (1981), Jigsaw (1980), Birth Rites (1977)