Gil Brealey the spark for
South Australian Film
 Corporation to kickstart
 Australian film industry

Gil Brealey (left), as founding director and chairman of the South Australian Film Corporation (1972-76), was co producer of Sunday Too Far Away (1975), starring Jack Thompson.

Gil Brealey, television and film director, producer and writer, was the daring and imaginative hands-on force as founding director and chairman of the South Australian Film Corporation,set up by Don Dunstan’s state government in 1972.

The corporation played the leading role in reviving Australian film making. Prompting other states to set up similar bodies, it had critical and commercial success with its earliest films such as Sunday Too Far Away (1975: Australian Film Institute best film, best lead actor and best supporting actor awards), Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), Storm Boy (1976) and Breaker Morant (1980).

Shine (1996) was a critical and commercial success. Geoffrey Rush won the American Academy award for best actor. The director, Flinders University graduate Scott Hicks, was nominated as best director for the Academy, Golden Globe and AFI awards.

The corporation also help launch the careers of actors and film makers such as Peter Weir, Jack Thompson, Rolf de Heer, Mario Andreacchio, Bryan Brown, and Bruce Beresford.

In the 1980s, the corporation moved into television production at a disused factory in Hendon, a northwestern Adelaide suburb. The Battlers mini series in 1994 was the corporation’s last as producer. It shifted to supporting South Australian film and television with funds and making available studios. This was its role in the Nine television network’s McLeod’s Daughters, filmed in rural South Australia.

The corporation's new home from 2008 was the Adelaide Studios at eastern suburbs Glenside. Adelaide still takes a leading role in film with its biennial October 11-day film festival that has become one of the most innovative in the country.