Movies
Incredible India launches short-film contest for travellers
MUMBAI: Incredible India, an initiative by the Ministry of Tourism in association with content-based digital solutions provider Trivone, Bangalore-based digital media and content services company, has launched a short film contest for travelers.
The aim of the contest is to promote tourism by depicting pristine destinations within the country. It is open to both Indians and foreign nationals. Anyone who loves traveling and capturing those moments can upload travel videos of less than 3 minutes’ duration, on the Pixel13 (www.pixel13.in) website to showcase the best of their experiences.
Trivone founder and CEO L Subramanyan said “We are happy to join hands with Incredible India to promote Indian tourist destinations globally. Our aim is to get tourists to document and articulate their experience through a short video film that can be accessed by anyone who visits the website. We also think that such a venture can create awareness of little known places within the country which have thus far remained unexplored.”
The jury is headed by filmmaker Singeetham Srinivasa Rao and actor Kamal Haasan.
The short-film adjudged as the ‘Best Film’ based on the online poll and jury will receive a prize worth Rs 50,000.
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.
