Robina Rose

Born

1951-05-29

Died

2025-01-26

Birthplace

London, England

Biography

Born in 1951 to Danish and German parents, Robina grew up in Notting Hill, London. After leaving school, she became a film projectionist at the Arts Lab on Drury Lane, Covent Garden. She later attended the Royal College of Art, graduating in 1977, where she worked as a camera operator on Celestino Coronado’s Hamlet, starring Helen Mirren and Quentin Crisp. Robina created three brilliantly distinctive and compelling experimental films: Birth Rites (1977), documenting a friend's home birth; Jigsaw (1980), made in collaboration with a group of autistic children in London; and Nightshift (1981), featuring punk icon Jordan as a hotel receptionist at the Portobello Hotel in West London, where Robina herself was working at the time. Nightshift premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival (1981) and was shown at Berlin’s 12th International Forum of New Cinema (1982). It was later screened in New York and acquired for the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Awarded a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) fellowship, Robina moved to Berlin, where she was later invited to teach at the German Film and Television Academy (DFFB). She later returned to the UK to work for the BBC’s Community Programme Unit, where she made several films, including the first about the use of pesticides in agriculture. Beyond her filmmaking career, Robina studied landscape history at the Architectural Association and became chair of the London branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England. She played a key role in drafting the CPRE’s original London Plan (2004), advocating for improvements in air quality, green spaces, and housing. Passionate about community activism, she co-founded the Friends of Portobello and the Save Portobello campaigns. In 2015, she ran as the Green Party candidate for Kensington. Robina was fiercely intelligent and witty—always questioning and challenging injustice and hypocrisy wherever she saw it. She was a keen astronomer and had a telescope on her top floor - she would have loved that she passed away during a rare planetary parade. She appreciated the renewed interest in her films, particularly through the Tate Britain exhibition Women in Revolt!, which featured Birth Rites, and the recent festival presentations of the newly restored Nightshift. She died the 26th of January 2025.