Trivia

Selected for the Rome Olympic Games 1960 in the sport of canoeing.

In 2005, he won a World Masters Championship in double Canadian canoe class that took place in Canada.

Came to Australia as a Hungarian refugee in 1957.

Was also a judge twice at the Melbourne International Film Festival and at the now renowned St Kilda Film Festival.

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

Won the Visage 2014 Portrait Competition in Photography (Yarra Ranges). His portrait photos also made the finals in the National Photographic Portrait Prize in 2013, 2015 & 2022 in Canberra, and Duo Magazine Percival Photographic Portrait Prize 2016 in Townsville.

Has two sons, Nicolas and Tomas.

Gaal 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.

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.

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.

Settling in Melbourne, he became involved with photography and filmmaking, working with the ABC and training as a teacher. I.

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

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.

In 2022, the Hungarian TV network Duna did a special profile on Gaal, on a Duna World segment and a tribute to Ivan Gaal was staged in Melbourne at the Thornbury Picture House.

After staying 6 months in the migrant camp in Bonegilla in Victoria, he settled in Melbourne, and 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.

In 2024, Gaal was featured in the book Melbourne and the Movies, written by Ross Campbell.

Gaal was a finalist in the National Photographic Portrait Prizes of 2013 and 2015.

Ivan Gaal believed his photograph of his friend George Spartels helped the actor win roles early in his career.

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

Gaal was an Australian filmmaker. He primarily made documentary films. He also worked as a professional photographer, and also gained recognition as an Olympic standard canoeist.

Gaal remained physically active in his later years, taking up lawn bowling at the age of 70, winning championships at the Richmond, Princes Park and Warburton bowling clubs. He also continued being athletically competitive with his canoeing, winning the World Masters Championship in double Canadian canoe class in 2006 in Edmonton, Canada.

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.

Ivan Gaal came to Australia as a refugee from his native Hungary in 1957.

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.

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, 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.

Thirteen of his short films are held by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne.