Hindi
India’s only traveling film festival returns to Mumbai
MUMBAI: Touted to be India’s only traveling film festival, the 6th of Jagran Film Festival will celebrate its last leg in Mumbai from 28 September to 4 October. With Fun Cinemas as its screening partner, the festival’s theme this year is ‘Happiness.’
The gala opening of the seven-day festival in Mumbai will bring together films under competitive categories such as ’Indian Showcase,’ ‘Jagran Shorts’ (an international competition for short films), ‘Cinema of the Sellers’ and ‘Debut Directors.’
The festival will also pay tribute to the films of the golden era in the ‘Retrospective’ section. In its quest to showcase the best of international cinema, this edition will present a collection of 10 Best International Short films under a special section ‘Top Shorts.’
Jagran Film Festival strategic consultant Manoj Srivastava said, “This year, we have tried to exceed our own benchmarks while curating a film extravaganza that not only showcases some of the finest films from India and the world over, but also leaves indelible imprints on everyone who has an insatiable appetite for narrating and discovering stories. From exploring newer cultures, to learning some rare film skills, the Mumbai edition is packed with a whole bunch of out-of-the-world experiences for every curious and film-loving heart in India.”
The festival will also feature a rendezvous with some masters of the cinema world who engage, enlighten and educate on various topics in their workshops and master classes. Film enthusiasts in Mumbai can experience the first brush of this year’s creative workshops everyday from 29 September – 4 October from 11 am onwards. The sessions range from Public Interviews, Master Classes to subjects like Casting in Cinema, Finding Money for films, Meet the Director, Making Advertising films, Selling films and many more.
As the official country focus partner, American Center will also screen some well-known American classics. This year, the festival has also got on board Whistling Woods International (WWI), Film Federation of India (FFI) and Motion Pictures Dist. Association (India) Pvt Ltd as partners.
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.
