Ivan Gaal

Ivan Gaal (born 23 March 1938) is an Australian filmmaker.

He primarily makes documentary films.

He has also worked as a professional photographer, and also gained recognition as a canoeist.

Gaal was born in Budapest, Hungary, on 23 March 1938, and was educated in the Communist system until his departure to Australia at the age of 18.

At his school in Budapest, the historic Toldy Ferenc Gimnázium, he excelled in the sport of Olympic wrestling and was the junior champion of Budapest in 1954.

He also excelled in canoeing.

He emigrated to Australia as a refugee in 1957, following the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

He worked for the Australian Broadcasting Commission from 1959 to 1969 as an audio technician, and then worked for the Department of Education Victoria from 1970 in the Audio-Visual Education Centre (AVEC) film unit, where he stayed for almost 30 years, directing various docu-drama and documentary films.

At the same time, he made independently-produced films, with government grants.

Settling in Melbourne, he won the Australian Canoe Championship (held by the Australian Canoe Federation, now Paddle Australia) in the Canadian Pairs class in 1960, which led to his selection to the Australian canoeing team for the Rome Olympics in 1960.

Due to a lack of funds, he was unable to attend the games.

He took photos of various musical artists working for Fable Records in the 1970s, including Francisus Henri and for the Department of Education, promoting physical and sport education for Victorian students in the 1990s and 2000s, and for the Victorian Olympic Council from 2006-2014, where he was awarded an Order of Merit in 2012.

Gaal's film career started in 1970 with the film All for the Love of It (8 mins, 16mm).

His work in the 1970s gained recognition at film festivals and won awards.

Applause Please was a finalist at the Sydney Film Festival short film awards in 1975; Eclipse, Getting the Message, The Punter, and Tandberg on Page One were all selected for the Melbourne Film Festival; Tandberg On Page One was a finalist in the Australian Film Institute Awards in 1983; Ibrahim received two ATOM Awards in 1986 and was voted by children as the best Australian educational film of the year, and was also a finalist at the Birmingham (Alabama, USA) Educational Film Festival awards in 1987; The Punter, Ibrahim and Jubilee and Beyond were selected for the St.Kilda Film Festival.

Also, Soft Soap in 1977 was distributed in commercial cinemas as a short film supporting feature films.

He also completed the Graduate Diploma in Applied Film and Television from the Swinburne Film and Television School (now Victorian College of the Arts) in 1978.

He has been involved in many organisations over the years, including the Melbourne Filmmakers' Co-Op, the Pram Factory, the Australian Teachers of Media, Metro Magazine and the Yarra Ranges Film Society.

He was interviewed regarding his involvement in the Melbourne Filmmakers' Co-Op in the 2022 documentary film Senses of Cinema, premiering at the 70th Melbourne International Film Festival.

While working as a filmmaker, Gaal also worked in still photography.

The Age newspaper (in the column Buff’s Choice on July 20, 1984), called Gaal a “local stalwart” for his films.

Gaal’s films and videos are available from ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image) Lending Collection and NFSA (National Film and Sound Archive) Screen Lending Collection.

After a period of working for the Department of Education promoting school sports with video and photographs in the 1990s, Ivan returned to directing his own films in 2006 with Grey Paddle Power, and then Icing on the Cake in 2009, and A Man From the Other Side in 2015, which was Awarded at the Yarra Ranges Film Festival at Warburton in 2016.

He remained athletically competitive until his later years, winning the World Masters Championship in double Canadian canoe class in 2006 in Edmonton, Canada,

He won the Visage Portrait Competition in Photography (Yarra Ranges) in 2014 and also made the finals in the National Photographic Portrait Prize in 2013, 2015 and 2022 in Canberra (see this newspaper story of Gaal's 2022 entry), and Duo Magazine Percival Photographic Portrait Prize 2016 in Townsville, and one of his photographs, of George Spartels, was accepted into the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra in 2019.

He staged a solo photo exhibition at Art Centre, Warburton, Victoria, in 2017.

Recently, his film Applause, Please screened in a special retrospective program at Melbourne Cinematheque in 2017.

In 2017, ACMI released 5 of Gaal's film onto YouTube: Camberwell Junction, Applause Please, Soft Soap, The Punter, and Tandberg on Page One.

More references to Gaal's film and photography work can be found within the Trove database.

He has published a book of his photographs called People, Stories and Dance in 2018.

In 2021, Gaal published his autobiography, It's All Good ... (ISBN 978-0646-84034-5) Trove

In 2022, the Hungarian TV network Duna did a special profile on Gaal, on a Duna World segment on 2022.

10. 18, and a Tribute to Ivan Gaal was staged in Melbourne by the film group Unknown Pleasures.

In June 2019, Ivan participated in a film festival entitled "Australian Films - Hungarian Spirit", presented in Budapest, Hungary.

He was a guest at the festival, screening several of his films, and giving a couple of speeches.

When he was there, he was interviewed on Duna World TV, on the show "Ot-kontinens", on June 22, 2019.

In April 2022, Ivan's film A Man From the Other Side was screened (and received an Honorable Mention) at the Dare To Struggle Film Festival.

It also screened at the Love, Art, Revolution Film Festival in Sydney in April 2023.

The film critic Adrian Martin has said of Gaal: “Ivan Gaal is clearly a thoughtful filmmaker who has reflected long and hard, over his lifetime, on the ways and means of educational cinema”