Hindi
Navi Mumbai gears up for its first film festival
MUMBAI: Navi Mumbai, known as the satellite city of Mumbai, will hold its first ever Film Festival, Navi Mumbai International Film Festival (NMIFF) from 31 January to 2 February, 2014. The festival will be held at the DY Patil Auditorium in Nerul, one of the largest auditoriums in the city.
The festival has been founded with the aim to give a global exposure to the budding film makers. The film buffs will have a repository of fine movies from various genres from across the globe.
The festival is open to film makers from across the globe and appreciates all genres of film making. The films to be screened have been slotted in three categories – student shorts, professional shorts and feature films. These categories are inclusive of short films, AD films, animation, documentaries, music videos and social awareness films. NMIFF will be screening around 22 movies in three days. The winners will be selected by a panel of esteemed jury members and awarded with cash prizes and trophies.
NMIFF Chairman and founder Sachin Khanna, said, “NMIFF is determined to providing an international platform to talented filmmakers. We want Navi Mumbai to be highlighted as International spot which is yet deprived of any festival like this. This will expose local talent too of the area on world map. This is our first year and we have already received an overwhelming response and are looking forward to a great three day festival showcasing some of the best films.”
The registration for passes can be made online on the film festival’s website at http://www.nmiff.in
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.
