Hindi
IFFI to pay tribute to Pran
MUMBAI: The 44th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) to be held in Goa from 20-30 November will pay tribute to the veteran actor Pran. The legendary Bollywood villain passed away in July this year. The festival will witness the screening of three of his most popular films – Jis Desh Main Ganga Behti Hai, Madhumati and Zanjeer.
A true legend of Indian cinema, Pran defined the villain in Hindi cinema for over a decade and more in the 1960s and set the benchmark for the on-screen baddie, before carving out an equally glorious career as a character/supporting actor. As a film villain, such was the terror he infused in the hearts of film-goers that the apocryphal story goes that for over twenty years, when he ruled the world of cinema as a villain, no family in north India named a child ‘Pran’.
Pran’s son Sunil Sikand and daughter Pinky Bhalla will be present for the screening. The film will be screened on the third and fourth day of the festival. Pran’s wife Shukla Sikand is also slated to attend the screening.
IFFI director Shankar Mohan says, “As per the festival’s tradition, IFFI pays tribute to noted film personalities who passed away in the year preceding the festival. IFFI invites their family members, friends and well-wishers to attend the screenings of the artiste’s best works.”
Last year, a special homage was paid to Yash Chopra at the festival.
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.
