Hindi
Siddharth Roy Kapur elected Film and TV Guild president
NEW DELHI: MD and CEO of Disney India Siddharth Roy Kapur has been unanimously elected as the president of the Film & Television Producers Guild of India Ltd. at the first meeting of its newly-constituted Guild Council of Management.
The meeting was held immediately after the 62nd annual general meeting on 24 September 2016. He will assume responsibility as the president of the guild with effect from 1 January 2017.
Incumbent president Mukesh Bhatt and the management team will be holding charge until 31 December 2016. Subsequently, the new team will be constituted on 1 January, 2017, when Kapur assumes office.
Kulmeet Makkar will continue to manage the affairs of the Film & Television Producers Guild of India Ltd. as its chief executive officer.
Bhatt said, “Now it is time to move on, and hand over the baton to the younger generation.”
Kapur said, “Mukeshji has served the industry tirelessly, with tremendous passion and commitment. I look forward to working to help address the challenges before us as an industry.”
Subhash Ghai, Sunil Lulla and Rajkumar Hirani have been inducted into the Guild Council of Management.
The members of the newly elected Council of Management of Guild are:
1. Siddharth Roy Kapur (president-elect)
2. Mukesh Bhatt
3. Dheeraj Kumar
4. Manish Goswami
5. Vijay Singh
6. Ashim Samanta
7. Srishti Arya
8. Ramesh Sippy
9. Manmohan Shetty
10. Ashutosh Gowariker
11. Rakesh Roshan
12. Karan Johar
13. Farhan Akhtar
14. Ekta Kapoor
15. Vishal Bhardwaj
16. Sushilkumar Agrawal
17. Madhu Mantena
18. Hiren Gada
19. Sabbas Joseph
20. Subhash Ghai
21. Sunil Lulla
22. Rajkumar Hirani
23. Kiran Shantaram (permanent member)
24. Randhir Kapoor (permanent member)
25. Amit Khanna (permanent member)
26. Kamalkumar Barjatya (member rmeritus)
27. Rajkumar Kohli (co-opted member)
Hindi
Remembering Gyan Sahay, the lens behind film, television and advertising
From a puppet rabbit selling poppadums to Hindi cinema, he framed it all.
MUMBAI: There are careers, and then there are canvases. Gyan Sahay, the veteran cinematographer, director, and producer who passed away on 10 March 2026 in Mumbai, had one of the latter. Over several decades in the Indian film and television industry, he turned lenses, lights, and the occasional puppet rabbit into something approaching art.
A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, Sahay built his reputation as a director of photography across a career that stretched from the early 1970s all the way to the digital age. He was the kind of craftsman who understood that a well-composed shot is not merely a technical achievement but a quiet act of storytelling.
For most Indians of a certain age, however, Sahay will forever be the man behind the rabbit. His direction of the iconic long-running television commercial for Lijjat Papad, featuring its now-legendary puppet bunny, gave the country one of its most cheerfully persistent advertising images. It was the sort of work that sneaks into the national subconscious and takes up permanent residence.
His big-screen credits as cinematographer include Anokhi Pehchan (1972), Pagli (1974), Pas de Deux (1981), and Hum Farishte Nahin (1988). In 1999, he stepped behind a different kind of camera altogether, making his directorial debut with Sar Ankhon Par, a drama that featured Vikas Bhalla and Shruti Ulfat, with a cameo by Shah Rukh Khan for good measure.
On television, Sahay was particularly prized for his command of multi-camera production setups, a skill that made him a go-to technician for large-scale shows and reality programmes. In an industry that has never been especially patient with complexity, he was the calm hand on the rig.
In later life, Sahay turned teacher. He participated regularly in masterclasses and Digi-Talks, often hosted by organisations such as Bharatiya Chitra Sadhna, sharing hard-won wisdom on cinematography, the comedy of timing in a shot, and the sweeping changes brought by the shift from celluloid to digital. He was also said to have been involved in a project concerning a biographical film on Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy.
Tributes from the film industry poured in following the news of his passing, with colleagues remembering him as a senior cameraman who served as a rare bridge between two entirely different eras of Indian cinema. That is, perhaps, the finest thing one can say of any craftsman: he kept up, and he brought others along with him.
