During her student years, Nash was actively involved in film and video and also worked as a teaching assistant in courses on the social psychology of communication. In 1973, she moved to Montreal to do her PhD at McGill University, writing a doctoral thesis entitled "Images of Women in NFB Films during World War II and the Post-War Years: 1939-1949." She also conducted a year-long research project at the Allen Memorial Institute of Psychiatry on how people's predispositions affect their evaluation of media events.
A long-time fan of the National Film Board, Nash became interested in its women's unit, Studio D, which was just starting up in 1975. For International Women's Year, she wrote, directed and animated a one-minute film clip entitled IT'S NO YOLK for Studio D's "Just a Minute" series. That same year, she also participated in workshops on different film crafts given by Studio D.
Nash worked for several years as a freelance writer, researcher, director and animator for the NFB before directing and editing her first major film, IF YOU LOVE THIS PLANET, which won the Oscar for best documentary short in 1983.
The following year, she teamed up with Bonnie Sherr Klein to co-direct SPEAKING OUR PIECE, a one-hour documentary about women involved in the peace movement in different countries. She subsequently directed three short profiles of women who had appeared in the film, as well as the half-hour documentary RUSSIAN DIARY (1989), based on a diary she had kept while filming in the Soviet Union. Shot months before Gorbachev came to power, it captures some of the tensions and contradictions of a society on the threshold of change.
In 1991, she directed and edited MOTHER EARTH, a 10-minute film, without words, composed of stock shots selected from over 50 years of NFB productions.
Her latest film, WHO'S COUNTING? MARILYN WARING ON SEX, LIES AND GLOBAL ECONOMICS, is a feature-length documentary on the ideas of outspoken New Zealand writer, political figure and economist Marilyn Waring.
Nash was the subject of the 1990 CBC documentary IF YOU LOVE FREE SPEECH: AN UNGUIDED TOUR TO THE TWILIGHT ZONE directed by Pierre Leduc.
Documentary (Short Subjects) 1982: IF YOU LOVE THIS PLANET - Producer (w. Edward Le Lorrain)
1 nomination, 1 Award