Hindi
Good biopics can be made with good actors: Rakeysh Mehra
MUMBAI: He may be getting entirely positive response for the “biopic” he made on sprinter Milkha Singh’s life but filmmaker Rakeysh Omprkash Mehra believes that a film can’t be a biopic. He says that a film can always be an “inspired by a true life piece” which he believes even Bhaag Milkha Bhaag is as it isn’t telling the story of Singh from starting to end. “It’s rather telling the stories of his life that led him to become Milkha Singh,” said Mehra while talking during the session – “From Real Life Heroes to Reel Life Heroes: Biopics Inspiring Generations” on the first day of FICCI Frames 2014.
Also present at the session was Farhan Akhtar who has received rave reviews for his performance as Milkha Singh, while it was being anchored by CNN-IBN Entertainment Editor Rajeev Masand.
Mehra, when quizzed if filmmakers take certain liberties and tweak the life story while filming a biopic, he remarked: “When you tell a story, you have your own interpretation. Like in BMB, we didn’t follow Singh’s life in chronological order rather we started the story from an incident that would transform his life.” Mehra believes that storytellers have to be “morally” correct while telling stories.
While talking about the most important aspect of making a film on a person’s life, Farhan said that it is very important to come down to that one lesson of the person’s life from which the audiences can draw an inspiration. “The writing is another important aspect,” says Farhan.
In the same vein, Mehra says that it’s the actors, especially the one playing the title role who can put across the story in the best possible way. “It is important for the actors to get the feelings correct and the essence of the movie out,” he said.
Mehra, now wants to make a movie on the life of Guru Dutt and for the research he thinks that more than studying the life of the person, it is important to understand the situation in which that person lived and grew to become who he was. “It’s very important to understand the time in which the person lived,” said Mehra, adding that he is even studying the life of Sahir Ludhianvi.
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.
