Hindi
West Bengal government to set up a film archive
KOLKATA: With an aim to set up a film archive in the state, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee met Bollywood actress Jaya Bachchan.
“I had asked Jaya Bachchan to work out a plan for a film archive here with the direct involvement of Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan ji. It will help the industry here,” Banerjee said after her hour-long meeting with Jaya Bachchan at the state Secretariat Nabanna.
Jaya Bachchan, after meeting the chief minister said, “I came here responding to the CM’s call for working out a plan for a film archive. The CM has also sought the involvement of Amitabh Bachchanji. I have submitted a proposal in this regard,” Jaya said.
When experts were contacted they said that the state government plans to safeguard the heritage of cinema for posterity and act as a centre for dissemination of a healthy film culture here. “Familiarizing foreign audiences with Bengali cinema and to make it more visible across the globe is another declared objective of the state government,” an expert added.
Going forward, the state might also look at classifying and documenting data related to film and undertake research on cinema.
Generally books and periodicals covering cinema, festival publications, ancillary material like song booklets, photographs, wall posters, pamphlets, folders, disc records and other memorabilia on cinema are preserved by the research and documentation section.
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.
