Hindi
Shashi Kapoor to receive Dadasaheb Phalke award
NEW DELHI: Veteran film actor and producer Shashi Kapoor, who charmed his way in Bollywood as an actor with his unique mannerisms, will receive the 46th Dadasaheb Phalke Award for the year 2014.
The award is conferred by the Central Government for outstanding contribution to the growth and development of Indian cinema. The award consists of a Swarn Kamal (Golden Lotus), a cash prize of Rs 10 lakhs and a shawl.
The award is given on the basis of recommendations of a Committee of eminent persons set up by the Government for this purpose. This year, a five member jury consisting of eminent film personalities, after due deliberations, unanimously recommended Kapoor for the prestigious award.
Information and Broadcasting Minister Arun Jaitley conveyed his congratulations on the occasion.
Born on 18 March 1938, Shashi Kapoor is the youngest son of the late Prithviraj Kapoor and the youngest brother Raj Kapoor, both of whom have also been conferred this award. While Prithviraj Kapoor received this award in 1972, Raj Kapoor received it in 1988.
Shashi, who hails from arguably the largest film family in the world, started acting from the age of four, He acted in plays directed and produced by his father while travelling with Prithvi Theatres. He started acting in films as a child in the late 1940s. His best known performances as child artist were in Aag (1948) and Awaara (1951), where he played the younger version of the character played by his elder brother Raj. Shashi also worked as assistant director in the 1950s.
Shashi made his debut as a leading man in the 1961 BR Chopra film Dharmputra and went on to appear in more than 175 Hindi films, some of them made by his brother Raj under the banner RK Films among them Satyam Shivam Sundaram. He was a very popular actor in Bollywood during the 60s, 70s and until the mid 80s.
Shashi was one of India’s first actors to go international. He is known internationally for starring in many British and American films and the team of producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory starred him in The Householder (1963), Shakespeare Wallah (1965), Bombay Talkie (1970) and Heat and Dust (1982). He also starred in other British and American films such as Siddhartha (1972) and Muhafiz (1994). His last film as actor was in 1998 in the English Side Streets and also was the narrator the same year for the feature Jinnah.
In 1978, Shashi set up his production house Film Valas, which produced critically acclaimed films such as Junoon (1978) which starred his wife Jennifer Kendall, who was well-known on the British theatre scene, Kalyug (1981), 36 Chowringhee Lane (1981), Vijeta (1982) which introduced his son Kunal and Utsav (1984). He also produced and directed a fantasy film titled Ajooba, which had Amitabh Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor in the lead role. Jennifer passed away in 1984.
He also set up Prithvi Theatres in Mumbai to promote theatre as his father had always been a theatre actor along with acting in films. Prithvi Theatres is managed by Shashi’s daughter Sanjana.
Shashi was honoured with Padma Bhushan in 2011. He is also a recipient of three National Film Awards.
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.
