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Cinenova is a non-profit organisation dedicated to distributing feminist film and video. Follow us

Cinenova is a non-profit organisation dedicated to distributing feminist film & video. Formed in 1991 from the merger of two feminist distributors, Circles and Cinema of Women, Cinenova provides the means to discover and watch artists, experimental, narrative, documentary and educational moving image works. Cinenova is a collectively organised volunteer led organisation.

04/09/2026

Cinenova is proud to announce that our new website is now live.

Over the past six months, we’ve been working with .tools to realise a long-standing need: making an accessible online catalogue of our 300+ films / videos, and extensive paper archive. As part of this relaunch, we have commissioned new writing from Samira Makki, Remi Graves, Khairani Barokka, Isabel Seguí and Phoebe Beckett Chingono. These will be available to read and listen to on our website soon.

A series of events will mark the launch, sharing the work with audiences in person and online, including:

Open now: free film library in Berwick-upon-Tweed
‘Starting With a Gesture Made Towards One Another’ is a free film library in partnership with Berwick Film & Media Arts Fest - watch films in-person and engage with archival materials. Open Saturdays 12-4pm, Berwick-upon-Tweed.

19 September: Workshop with Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival + Heritage Open Days
Join us for ‘Working with Film Archives’ – a free workshop where we’ll be discussing how artists can use archives in their work. (full info & sign up link in bio)

14 September - 11 October: Online exhibition
Closing out the launch, we're screening three films from the Cinenova catalogue as part of our online exhibition, 'An imaginary group, a notional community...'.

Image on Slide 4: ‘Seeds of Resistance’, Juliet Miller, 1985.

This project was made possible with support from BFI National Lottery Screen Heritage Fund, awarding Good Cause funding.

18/08/2026

We’re excited to announce a few upcoming screenings of Nightshift (dir. Robina Rose).

📍18 & 26 Aug, London - part of Big Screen Classics at BFI
The screening on 26 Aug will be introduced by writer and film programmer Sophia Satchell-Baeza and followed by a Q&A with artist filmmaker and co-writer of the film’s script Nicola Lane nicola lane

📍27 Aug, Warsaw - part of Another Story programme supported by HER Docs Festival HER DOCS and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. The film will also screen again in Oct as part of HER Docs 2026 edition.

📍8th Sep, Manchester. The film will screen as part of Rip It Up season at HOME Welcome HOME

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.

19/12/2025

Winter break announcement:
Cinenova will be taking a winter break from 20 December to 5 January 2026.

Distribution and general email enquiries received between 19 December 2025 - 5 January 2026 will be responded to once we reopen.

As 2025 comes to a close, we want to thank our community of filmmakers, researchers, exhibitors and partners for your continued support and engagement throughout the year. Wishing you a restful holiday season, we look forward to being back soon.

Keep organising, keep amplifying - fall into community, not despair. Follow and - act on their 3 immediate ways to support the hunger strikers: British political prisoners are at imminent risk of death. Demand justice now, not later.

Image credit: Back Inside Herself - S. Pearl Sharp, 1984. Courtesy of the filmmaker and Cinenova.

05/12/2025

✨ Due to the high level of interest, we’re sharing an FAQ about the Project Manager and Project Assistant roles!✨

Full details & application links are in our bios.

📍 Can I undertake either role fully remotely?
No, both roles are predominantly in-person with some remote flexibility. Work with the Cinenova archive and team requires presence in London, UK.

📍 Where will the work take place?
Primarily at Cinenova in Homerton, East London, with some flexibility for remote tasks.

🌍 Are the roles open to international applicants?
Applicants must be eligible to work in the UK and able to work mainly in person in our London office.

🕒 What’s the time commitment?
Days/hours are flexible and arranged with the Cinenova team. We would like both roles to have overlapping working days.

📅 Expected start date?
Mid-January 2026, with flexibility to begin as late as February depending on availability.

⏳ Duration of the roles?
Both are fixed-term for the project’s duration, ending in Autumn 2026.

💡 Experience required for the Project Manager?
As stated in the Person Specification, the Project Manager should have knowledge and experience with digital cataloguing systems or digital preservation. They should also have an interest, knowledge and experience of archival cataloguing practices and familiarity with open-source software and web development processes.

For all application details, head to the link in the bio 🔝

03/12/2025

📣 We’re hiring a Project Manager!

Cinenova is seeking an experienced and highly organised Digital Access Project Manager to lead our BFI National Lottery–funded Digital Access Project.
This freelance role will shape the future of our feminist moving image archive through a new digital catalogue, website, visual identity, and commissioned writing.

📍 Hybrid (Homerton / remote)
🗓️ Fixed term contract
💷 £257/day (140 days total / 3-4 days per week)

Please note: This role cannot be fully remote; responsibilities require on-site presence in London to work directly with the Cinenova archive and team.

This is a key leadership role for someone committed to feminist, anti-racist, and accessible practices.
Apply by 18 December — link in bio.

Supported by the BFI Screen Heritage Fund, awarding funds from the National Lottery.

[Image Description]: Graphic image with call out information on black, along with a group of Black women dancing in the sunshine.
Image credit; Sweet Sugar Rage (1985), Sistren Theatre Collective

10/04/2025

Join us for the homecoming screening of Robina Rose's newly restored Nightshift!
Tuesday 13 May BFI
with an introduction by Jon Jost - filmmaker, cinematographer, and friend of Robina Rose. We’re delighted to share that many of the original cast and crew will be in attendance.

"Moody and atmospheric, Nightshift by Robina Rose – newly restored from the original camera elements – looks stunning in this digital 4K presentation.

Legendary punk stayover The Portobello Hotel provides the setting for Rose’s captivating, psycho-dramatic long night of the soul. The monotonous, dreamlike stillness of nocturnal reception work slowly mutates with the arrival of eccentric guests from London’s counterculture – including Heathcote Williams and Anne Rees-Mogg. The uncanny temporal shifts and strange occurrences are beautifully underscored by a soundtrack from Simon Jeffes of the Penguin Café Orchestra." - BFI.

This screening is dedicated to Robina Rose, who passed away in January.

Tickets on sale now: https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=nightshift-intro&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id=

10/03/2025

Join us this Wednesday 12 March at for a screening as part of their Reel to Real screening series.

‘Acts of Compulsion’ is a programme of works from the Cinenova collection at the intersections of sexuality, health and social action in the 1980’s & 90’s. The five shorts in the programme employ experimental techniques, documentary and performance, offering intimate portrayals of touch, desire, care and resistance. These themes in turn fold into ongoing questions about the work of Cinenova itself: how can we acknowledge our interdependent relationships, particularly as an un-funded volunteer organisation?

Further information and book tickets via link in bio.

Images:
1: Loss of Heat, Noski Deville, UK, 1994.
2: Condomnation, Anne Chamberlain, USA, 1994.
3: Video 28, Video Vera, UK, 1988.
4: Fierce Detail, Helena Goldwater, UK, 1995.
5: Keep Your Laws Off My Body, Catherine (Saafield) Gund & Zoe Leonard, USA, 1990.

All images courtesy of the artists and filmmakers.

03/02/2025

Cinenova is deeply saddened to announce the passing of Robina Rose (29/05/1951 – 26/01/2025).

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 will be deeply missed by Cinenova and the many communities and individuals for whom she was so important.

14/11/2024

Hello, we wanted to share some key Nov highlights✨You can find links to these events in our bio:

📍18 Nov, Scuola Senza Fine (d. Adriana Monti 1983) will screen at in Ghent, as part of the symposium: Making the World More Than Less Real, organised by

📍19 Nov, Leila and the Wolves (d. Heiny Srour 1984) will screen as part of the fifth edition of .online festival in Vilnius.

📍22 Nov, studio in Dartington will be screening the 1985 conversation between Audre Lorde and the Late Start collective (Viv Bietz, Shaheen Haq, Pratibha Parmar, Ingrid Pollard), followed by a special discussion with Alexis Pauline Gumbs and members of the collective.

23 Nov, Ella (WITCH/Catalyst Production, 1986) will be screened as part of the Black British Pioneers: Then and Now programme curated by at in Coventry.

29 Nov, Sistren in Photography (Aphra Video, 1991) also screening as part of the Black British Pioneers: Then and Now in Coventry.

Image Credit:

- Scuola Senza Fine (d. Adriana Monti 1983)
- Leila and the Wolves (d. Heiny Srour 1984)
- Audre Lorde in conversation (Late Start collective, 1985)
- Ella (WITCH/Catalyst Production, 1986)
- Sistren in Photography (Aphra Video, 1991)

08/10/2024

This Friday, 11 October, join Cinenova at the Block Museum for a special screening as part of the 'Revisiting Films By Women/Chicago ‘74' series. The programme features two films from the Cinenova collection by feminist collectives from England and Jamaica, produced in the 1970s and 80s. These films highlight the urgent social realities faced by women - from reproductive rights to labour issues - that demonstrate the heterogeneity of collective feminist filmmaking practices.

Screening for the first time since its recent digitisation, Sheffield Film Co-op’s first film, 'A Woman Like You' (1975), blends interviews with dramatisation to depict the struggles of a married mother of two as she attempts to obtain an abortion through the NHS. Sheffield Film Co-op formed in the early 1970s as a consciousness-raising group making radio programmes, before turning its efforts to highlighting the struggles of the Women's Liberation Movement on screen.

Sistren Theatre Collective’s Sweet Sugar Rage (1985) is an essential document of the Caribbean women’s movement. Sistren’s radical pedagogy utilised dramatic workshops and guerrilla street theatre as sites to develop collective action, bringing Jamaican oral and folk traditions into the production of plays and films. 'Sweet Sugar Rage' highlights the collective's work and explores the methods they used to draw attention to the difficult conditions faced by female workers on a Jamaican sugar estate.

The film selection was made collaboratively by Cinenova and Block Cinema. Following the screening, Charlotte Procter (a member of the Cinenova Working Group) will be present for a post-screening conversation.

Tickets are free - see the link in our bio for more details.

Images: 1 - 3: A Woman Like You - Sheffield Film Co-op (1975, UK, 18 mins, Digital). Recent 2K digitisation funded by the Open University. Special thanks to Dr Amy Charlesworth.

4 - 6: Sweet Sugar Rage - Sistren Theatre Collective (1985, Jamaica, 56 mins, Digital).
All stills courtesy of the filmmakers and Cinenova Distribution.

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