In the 1980s, she co-founded two organisations that helped launch Indigenous film and television in this country, the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA) and Imparja Television.

Launched to distribute audio cassettes of Indigenous language news to remote communities, CAAMA became an incubator for Aboriginal talent with a radio station, a video production company, a recording label for Indigenous musicians then, through Imparja, a satellite television service that reached hundreds of communities.

In the book Kin, edited by festival director Amanda Duthie, actor Deborah Mailman credits "Aunty Freda" with helping provide the training that allowed Aboriginal people to "sustain the culture and languages of Central Australia".

Former arts bureaucrat Kim Williams calls her a "visionary" for her passionate advocacy for Indigenous broadcasting.

And the director of The Sapphires, Wayne Blair, describes "Nana Freda" as "a champion for blackfella filmmakers" who "sacrificed a great deal for what we now possess".

Glynn, who has retired to Cooktown in Far North Queensland, was uncomfortable with all the attention.

"I ran away to get out of this sort of stuff," she said. "I used to have to do so much of it."

Erica Glynn, who made the documentary She Who Must Be Loved with niece Tanith Glynn-Maloney, said the family had long believed Freda's story - as a Kaytetye woman who was a single mother of five working full-time as a cleaner before chairing CAAMA - needed to be told.

"Blackfellas had to do it for themselves," she said. "Nobody was going to hand it over to Aboriginal people on their own to do. We had to fight for it."

Thornton, whose son Dylan River is a cinematographer and documentary maker, said his mother had a special talent for speaking the truth.

'The reason we are who we are is because of her," he said. "We were allowed to play and we were allowed to get angry and we were allowed to question stuff because mum did that.

"From day one, my earliest memories are mum getting angry about stuff because of the injustices that were happening. She taught me to have a voice."

Surrounded by her family, Freda admitted she only reluctantly agreed to be the subject of the documentary.

"I wanted to help the kids," she said with a laugh. "It's very hard to get a job in this jolly industry."