Margot Nash

Margot Nash is a New Zealand-born Australian documentary and experimental filmmaker. Her early experimental work focused on feminist film theory and surrealism. Her most famous film is Vacant Possession about family history and strife that reflected her actual childhood. Her films have been nominated for and won multiple Australian Film Institute AACTA awards along with awards from film festivals around the world. In 2017, We Aim To Please was re-screened at the 2017 Sydney Film Festival, after being digitally restored by the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA)

In 1982, Nash was the editor of feature length documentary For Love or Money about the history of women's working lives in Australia. The film utilizes a collection of clips including footage from home movies and newsreels to create a cohesive picture of working life. The film was included in the 1986 Sundance Film Festival and the 1991 Cinéma Du Reel festival.

In 1989, she directed an experimental short film Shadow Panic (1989), which was nominated for an Australian Film Institute Award for Best Experimental Film

In 1994, Nash wrote and directed Vacant Possession, which premiered at the Sydney Film Festival in 1995. Nash has said Vacant Possession "re-created some images from [her] childhood" and that she based the father in the film on her own dad. Vacant Possession was restored and re-screened at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2023.

From 1996 to 2001 Nash led a series of documentary workshops in the Pacific for Indigenous filmmakers and Pacific island women. In 2005, Nash directed the feature film Call Me Mum, which premiered at the Sydney Film Festival.

In 2012, she began a 14 week program as Filmmaker in Residence at Zürich University of the Arts and began working on a personal documentary which would go on to become The Silences. In 2015, after three years of work, The Silences was released. The film is an autobiographic look into her family's history and her parents' mental illness as it affected her childhood.

In 2016, the Melbourne Cinémathèque hosted a retrospective of Nash's work, highlighting her feminist work and connection to the 1970s Melbourne theatre scene.

In 2023, her short film Undercurrents: Meditations on Power (2023) had its World Premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) and its international premiere at the Warsaw Film Festival.

Filmography

As Director

We Aim to Please (1976), Short Bread and Dripping (1982), Short Shadow Panic (1989), Short Vacant Possession (1995) New Horizons (1996) Call Me Mum (2006) The Silences (2015) Undercurrents: Meditations on Power'' (2023), Short