Hindi
SACF celebrates life and work of Dev Anand
MUMBAI: The South Asian Cinema Foundation‘s (SACF) ‘A Musical Journey through the Dev Anand Era‘, reminded people of the golden period of Indian cinema recently when it celebrated the life and work of the late actor.
The SACF event saw live performances by the young as well as veteran singers and instrumentalists and a running narrative by the film historian and the director of SACF, Lalit Mohan Joshi in the presence of Dev Anand‘s family members among others.
Produced by SACF in association with the Nehru Centre, the programme presented a historical perspective of Indian Cinema‘s Golden Era.
Dev Anand, who expired in December last year, brought together and nurtured great icons of the Indian film industry like SD Burman, Sahir Ludhianvi, Guru Dutt, Raj Khosla, Kishore Kumar, Geeta Dutt, Mohammed Rafi, Asha Bhonsle and Lata Mangeshkar.
After Dev Anand got his first major break in Ziddi in 1948, he formed his own film company Navketan in 1949. For the next three decades he produced classics like Baazi (1951), Taxi Driver (1954), CID (1956), Hum Dono (1961), Guide (1965), Jewel Thief (1967), Hare Rama Hare Krishna (1971) and Des Pardes (1978).
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.
