Working for the Victorian Visual Education Department, aged 25, he won the first Australian Film Institute’s award, for Grampian Wonderland. Shortly after, as lecturer in English at Coburg Teachers College, he established an annual film festival and introduced cinema as an academic course. The die was cast. Most ABC producer/directors at the time were trained and employed as electronic television studio directors. There was still a need for film-based production, so in 1962 Brealey was recruited as its first film director and made notable international documentaries on Japan, Malta and Israel for INTERTEL, a consortium of national broadcasters including the ABC. Between-times he gave rein to his wit and love of experiment. He had a magisterial scorn of cant and bureaucracy, and made a satirical feature in which he cast dogs as departmental bosses. It was called Say Bow Wow and was telecast without any of the ABC’ s senior officers realising they were the dogs. In 1969, he was invited to join the Commonwealth Film Unit where he was asked to combine three of his greatest talents - as an organisational producer, a creative producer and as a teacher. Among many titles, he produced the series Three To Go, with his trainees Peter Weir, Brian Hannant and Oliver Howes each directing one of its parts. It won the best feature at the AFI Awards. Others he mentored included Phillip Noyce, Don Crombie, Chris McGill, Richard Brennan and Arch Nicholson. He was a gifted teacher, and later taught film at Flinders University and at the Australian Film and Television School.

He is perhaps best remembered for his creatively vibrant and turbulent four years as inaugural chairman and director of the South Australian Film Corporation (1972-76). In a breathtaking act of cultural audacity, then-premier Don Dunstan established the corporation in Adelaide - more than 1000km from the film centres of Melbourne and Sydney. Anne-Louise Lambert as Miranda in Picnic at Hanging Rock. Amid huge difficulties of creating a film industry in a provincial city, tiny budgets, local industry inexperience, government bureaucracy and production problems, Brealey wrestled into being, in a very short time, some of the first truly great Australian features - including Sunday Too Far Away directed by Ken Hannam, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Peter Weir’s first major success, and the children’s classic Storm Boy, directed by Henri Safran. Jack Thompson, who as a young actor played shearer Foley, the lead character in Sunday Too Far Away, described his delight at playing in something that felt so down-to-earth Australian. "It was as if we were children and had been given crayons and invited to make a picture of ourselves. Which we did. And it felt so accurate," he said. Sunday was a roaring success. Among many accolades, it won the Italian Film Festival and opened the first American Film Festival. It helped convince Australians that good local films could be made and it helped propel Australian cinema to international recognition. Sunday Too Far Away: Foley (Jack Thompson) and Tom West (Rob Bruning) at work shearing.

Within a year of Sunday’s success, every Australian state established a film corporation modelled on the SAFC. Brealey later became the founding chairman of the Tasmanian Film Corporation. His time at the SAFC was bittersweet. The high standards he uncompromisingly expected led to disputes at all levels. He was often wounded by them. But few could quibble with the quality and daring of the films that came from his determination. Never was Brealey’s gentleness of spirit more evident than in his direction of Annie’s Coming Out (1984). The film told the true story of a girl, whose bright intelligence was masked by the severity of cerebral palsy which deprived her of speech and control of her body. It told of the struggle of a therapist to have her released from an institution. Brealey decided to make the film, not with actors, but with disabled children, so as to tell the story with authenticity and to dignify their lives. Tenderly he spent hours coaching and guiding them and helped the girl playing Annie to be comfortable with the camera and crew. The film was a huge critical success, won three AFI awards and was shown in many film festivals around the world. Surprisingly, as a result of screenings of Annie in Hollywood and a good critical review, he received an offer to direct Arnold Schwarzenegger’s sequel to The Terminator. He met him and found him to be gentle and thoughtful but the script to be gratuitously violent. It was not his thing. Hollywood was not for him. Of the moguls, he said acidly that "they can make films for 14-year-old boys because that is what they are themselves. They know their market".

So he turned down a huge fee and returned to Australia. Soon after, he retired. He said it was partly burn-out, but mostly he wanted to make a new life. So with his partner, he settled on a remote property above the Hawkesbury River, where, with a handyman neighbour, he built a beautiful stone and timber house, refurbished an old fisherman’s hut at the water’s edge and stocked the sandstone ridges with peacocks. Years later, they moved to the Blue Mountains. In his 40 years of filmmaking, Brealey directed or produced over 100 films and television programs which won over 30 Australian and international awards, including five top awards of the Australian Film Institute (AFI). He was awarded the Cecil Holmes Award for his services to the film industry and his support of film directors. In 1976, he was made an officer of the Order of Australia (AO). Brealey was a visionary with his feet on the ground. He brought some powerful qualities to his work - a bright intellect, great imagination, high principles and a great talent for organising and focusing the sometimes ephemeral aspects of the creative process into the practical realities of production. One of his great legacies was the cohort of once-young filmmakers he set upon their careers, who, in their maturity, are showing in their own work the dreams he had for the Australian cinema. He is survived by his partner of 55 years, Rodney Sangwell. Storry Walton.

Gilbert John Brealey AO 1932-2018