FILMOGRAPHY | margotnash

Undercurrents: meditations on power (2023)

Made from reimagined/recycled images and sounds from the filmmaker’s archive and other found materials,Undercurrents is a poetic essay documentary about the undercurrents of history playing out in the present. It is a meditation on the global rise of the far-right, war and the nuclear threat. It explores links between patriarchal power, the environmental crisis, racism and colonisation and pays tribute to the life affirming power of resistance.

A personal essay documentary about the tangled bonds, secret histories and unspoken traumas of family life, that stretches from New Zealand to the Australian suburbs. It is an exploration of early childhood and the “silences” of the past that resonate in the present. It draws upon a wealth of photographs, letters, oral histories, documentary footage and clips from the filmmaker’s previous work. It unfolds a mother’s story of lost opportunities, lost love and grief; a father’s story of work, mental illness and war; and a daughter’s story of trying to piece together a more complex picture of the confusing ties of love, loss and kinship between a mother and daughter.

Call Me Mum (2005)

Kate is on a plane taking Warren, her 18 year old Torres Strait Islander foster son, to meet Flo, his birth mother, who is gravely ill in hospital in Brisbane. Flo hasn’t seen

Warren since she took him to the hospital on Thursday Island when he was a toddler and the white authorities took him away. But as Warren, Flo and Kate all prepare themselves for the reunion, unbeknown to them, Kate’s Brisbane based parents, Keith and Dellmay, are planning a different kind of reunion.

Set in the recent past, CALL ME MUM is a series of interlinked monologues where five characters unravel a complex tale of mothering, race relations and family in Australia.

Vacant Possession (1994)

Following her mother's death, Tessa returns to her childhood home, a house haunted by emotional secrets. But how do you return home after years away? And what's home after all... a house... a place... a family?

VACANT POSSESSION is a story of two families - one white, one Indigenous - both living in the shadow of the past. A past fragmented by events too long unresolved.

Weaving dream, memory and fantasy, past and present, VACANT POSSESSION is a story of conflict and the complexities of reconciliation.

Shadow Panic (1989)

Three women, strangers to each other, yet their lives seem inexplicably linked. SHADOW PANIC is a short experimental film about internal and external states of emergency, about personal and collective shadows, about resistance and spirit.

For Love Or Money (1983)

Five years in the making, with contributions from hundreds of women and over 200 Australian films, FOR LOVE OR MONEY is a unique, superbly crafted pictorial history of Australian women. The film chronicles the cycles of women's gains and losses as they are moved in and out of the workforce according to demands of the time. It reveals how women's unpaid and voluntary work keeps an entire system running smoothly, in peacetime and in war. As wives and mothers, women do the work of loving - the work that is never paid or recognized as real work. The film shows how women's work in the home determines the kinds of jobs they do in the paid workforce - the low-paid, low-status jobs.

Bread and Dripping (1982)

In BREAD AND DRIPPING, four women recount their lives during the bleak yers of the economic depression of the 1930s. Tibby Whalan, Eileen Pittman, Beryl Armstrong and Mary Wright describe their struggles to survive and maintain families when faced with widespread unemployment, evictions and hardship. The film makes extensive use of archival footage and photographs from the 1930s to present a fascinating insight into the lives of women in Australia. The title, Bread and Dripping, refers to a meal of leftover fat soaked in bread and eaten when no other food is available.

We Aim To Please (1976)

A film about female sexuality that not only touches the areas of paranoia, fear and doubt that women experience in relation to their bodies but is also joyful, erotic and funny.

EXTENDED FILMOGRAPHY

Undercurrents: meditations on power (2023)

Take (2019)

The Silences (2015)

Call Me Mum (2005)

Work (1997)

Cultural Patterns (1995)

Vacant Possession (1994)

Positive Women (1993)

Shadow Panic (1989)

Speaking Out (1986)

Teno (1984)

For Love Or Money (1983)

Bread And Dripping (1982)

Doled Out (1979)

We Aim To Please (1976)

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EXTENDED FILMOGRAPHY