Hindi
Sri Devi to inaugurate MAMI festival
MUMBAI: Actor Sridevi will light the ceremonial lamp to mark the opening of the city‘s most eagerly awaited cultural event, the 14th Mumbai Film Festival, organised by the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI).
The Mumbai Film Festival will pay homage to Indian cinema‘s first superstar, Hindi film legend Rajesh Khanna by dedicating a special segment to screen one of the late star‘s most memorable films Aradhana. Directed by Shakti Samanta in 1969, the film featured Rajesh Khanna and Sharmila Tagore. The film‘s screening is scheduled on 21 October at 1.15 p.m. at the Godrej theatre at National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA).
The festival will also pay homage to Dara Singh and A K Hangal who expired this year. While Dara Singh‘s film Samson directed by Nanabhai Bhatt will be screened on 23 October, Hangal‘s Dattak directed by Gul Bahar Singh will be screened on 20h October at 4.00 pm.
The festival will also host a special event segment to mark the centenary year of Indian cinema by screening a handpicked list of silent films accompanied by melodies from a live orchestra.
The festival is scheduled from 18 to 25 October at NCPA and Inox- Nariman Point, Liberty Cinemas, Marine Lines as the main festival venues and Cinemax-Andheri and Cinemax-Sion as the satellite venues.
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.
