Nina Hibbin

Nina Gloria Hibbin (28 September 1922 – 28 May 2004) was an English film critic and author. She was the film critic for the Daily Worker (subsequently known as the Morning Star) from 1957 to 1971, and also wrote reviews for The Lady. After retiring from journalism, she became the first person to work in the position of films officer for the Yorkshire Arts Association. During the late 1970s, she was programme director of the BFI-aligned Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle upon Tyne. She is the author of Eastern Europe: An Illustrated Guide and co-author (with her daughter, film producer Sally Hibbin) of What a Carry On – The Official Story of the Carry On Films.

Hibbin was a staunch communist and ensured that her reviews conveyed her political convictions. Writing in The Guardian shortly after her death, film critic Derek Malcolm said: "She will be remembered for her passionate advocacy of east European cinema, her hatred of the censorship sometimes imposed on it by regimes with no taste for rebellious art, and for her many campaigns to persuade British distributors to screen what was then called third-world cinema."

Childhood and early career Hibbin was born in Romford, Essex. Her family were Jewish and originated from Eastern Europe. She worked as an observer in the East End throughout the early part of the war, engaging citizens in casual conversation to ascertain morale and the effectiveness of the government's security measures. She was highly opposed to the MO's ties with the Ministry of Information, however, describing the link as an "act of betrayal". She resigned from the job in 1941, out of protest at what she saw as the ministry's manipulation of her reports, and once the opportunity came for women to enlist in military units on the home front.

Hibbin welcomed the opportunities presented by the war and enlisted in the WAAF. but became a permanent critic two weeks later. Despite its political slant, she also wrote film reviews for The Lady. Her review of Come Back, Africa – in which she described the film as "the most damning indictment of apartheid and the pass system that I have ever seen" and asked, "How long are we going to allow these appalling conditions to exist?" – ensured that the Daily Worker fully embraced the anti-apartheid cause. She described Lindsay Anderson's If ... as a "devastating view ... of the cruel traditions which go into the shaping of the ruling class" and judged it "the best and most significant film of the Sixties".

Derek Malcolm wrote in 2004 that Hibbin's reviews were "full of her sympathy for working people and against what she saw as the soul-destroying glibness of Hollywood". She decided to abandon film criticism in 1971. From 1976 to 1979, she was director of the BFI-aligned Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle upon Tyne. She oversaw a programme of films combining populist and more progressive tastes. One early critic of her programme bemoaned the preponderance of "films about tractor collectives in the Ukraine". Hibbin's directorship nevertheless led to healthy audience numbers at the Tyneside,

Hibbin retired and moved to Boulby, near Staithes in North Yorkshire. There, she and her husband Eric ran a café beside the Cleveland Way, a popular walking track. She edited two books of poetry by local writers.

In 2001, she moved to Saltburn. In her final years, she was afflicted with heart disease, emphysema, kidney failure and cancer. On her death in May 2004, she was survived by her daughter Sally, a film producer.