Director, Screenwriter, Editor

(b. January 1, 1949 Nanaimo, British Columbia)

After superlative undergraduate studies in literature and sociology, Terre Nash became the first recipient of a Master’s degree in communication studies from Simon Fraser University, writing her thesis on the psychological effects of videotape feedback. In 1973, she moved to Montreal to do her Ph.D. at McGill University, writing a thesis entitled "Images of Women in NFB Films During World War II and the Postwar 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.

Nash joined the National Film Board’s Studio D in 1975 after making a one-minute animated film called It’s No Yolk for a series of NFB shorts produced in honour of International Women’s Year. She worked for several years as a freelance writer, researcher, director and animator, before directing and editing her first major film, the anti-nuclear If You Love This Planet (1983). The film was denounced by the United States Justice Department as propaganda and went on to win an Academy Award® for Best Documentary Short Subject.

Nash has made a specialty of profiling smart, politically engaged women in films such as Speaking Our Peace (1985), A Love Affair with Politics: A Portrait of Marion Dewar (1987), and the Genie Award-nominated Who’s Counting? Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics (1995). She was the subject of the 1990 CBC documentary If You Love Free Speech: An Unguided Tour to the Twilight Zone, directed by Pierre Leduc.

Film and video work includes

It's No Yolk, 1975 (director; editor; animator) a.k.a. Just-A-Minute
Speaking Our Peace, 1985 (co-director with Bonnie Sherr Klein; co-writer with Gwynne Basen, Gloria Demers and Bonnie Sherr Klein)
A Writer in the Nuclear Age: A Conversation with Margaret Laurence, 1985 (director)
Nuclear Addiction: Dr. Rosalie Bertell on the Cost of Deterrence, 1986 (director; editor)
A Love Affair with Politics: A Portrait of Marion Dewar, 1987 (director; editor)
Russian Diary, 1989 (co-director with Bonnie Sherr Klein; writer; editor; co-producer with Kathleen Shannon, Rina Fraticelli, Signe Johansson, Bonnie Sherr Klein; narrator)
Mackenzie King and the Conscription Crisis, 1991 (narrator)
Mother Earth, 1991 (director; editor)
Rabbit Tales, 1992 (editor)
Marilyn Waring on Politics: Local & Global Show One, 1996 (director; co-editor with Markham Cook)
Marilyn Waring on Women and Economics Show Two, 1996 (director; co-editor with Markham Cook)
Marilyn Waring on the Environment Show Three, 1996 (director; co-editor with Markham Cook)
Kathleen Shannon: On Film, Feminism & Other Dreams, 1997 (editor)
My Left Breast, 2000 (editor)
White Thunder, 2002 (co-writer with Victoria King; editor)