Nightshift (1981) - 22/1 - Film Night

For our next film screening on Thursday 22nd January we celebrate the undercelebrated
Nightshift (1981) by British experimental filmmaker Robina Rose, who passed away in January 2025. Rose’s work, akin in style and content to that of Chantal Akerman and Marguerite Duras, has been cited as sorely overlooked, including by her contemporary Derek Jarman. Newly restored, Nightshift is her masterwork, and a beguiling example of slow, surreal, somnambulant cinema.

Taking place over the course of one night in West London’s Portobello hotel, where Rose herself worked at the time, Nightshift unfolds from the POV of a mute, watchful desk clerk, whose nightly tasks are interspersed with dreamlike fantasies and interactions with strange clientele.

The clerk is played by Pamela Rooke, aka Jordan, British punk icon, Vivienne Westwood muse and star of Jarman’s Jubilee (1978), whilst other prominent figures of countercultural London pass through the hotel foyer, including poet and actor Heathcote Williams and filmmaker Anne Rees-Mogg. Featuring gorgeous photography and an enveloping soundscape, Nightshift is a punk ode to nightworkers, nightcrawlers and the liminal haunts they occupy.

Doors from 6pm, film starts at 7pm. Tickets are £6 and as always, include a free drink on arrival.

This project is supported by Film Hub North with National Lottery funding on behalf of the BFI Film Audience Network. Nightshift has been digitally restored by Lightbox Film Center (Philadelphia) in collaboration with the British Film Institute and Cinenova. Restoration funding provided by Ron and Suzanne Naples. Film distributed by Cinenova.