Ivan Gaal came to Australia as a refugee from his native Hungary in 1957. Settling in Melbourne, he became involved with photography and filmmaking, working with the ABC and training as a teacher. In the early days of the alternative theatre group the Pram Factory, he recorded productions and took portraits of actors and other performers including dancers at work at Margaret Lasica’s Modern Dance Ensemble. Applause Please and the widely-distributed Soft Soap, two of his early short films, featured Max Gillies; Camberwell Junction (1975) became something of a cult classic on the Melbourne and Sydney independent film scenes. While Gaal was a key figure in the Melbourne Filmmakers’ Cooperative, having graduated from the Swinburne Film School in 1978 he worked at the Victorian Department of Education, directing many short films and documentaries including Tandberg on page 1 and Ibrahim (1983-1984), the latter exploring the experience of a teenaged refugee from Lebanon. Gaal was a finalist in the National Photographic Portrait Prizes of 2013 and 2015. Thirteen of his short films are held by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne. His work is favourably re-evaluated by prolific and esteemed film theorist Adrian Martin in ‘Comment, think, analyse, experience and learn: The neglected film work of Ivan Gaal’, Metro 2013.
Ivan Gaal believes his photograph of his friend George Spartels helped the actor win roles early in his career.
