Hindi
Maker of science programmes turns to Bollywood
MUMBAI: Maker of the popular science programme ‘Turning Point‘, Sanjay Tripathy, has debuted into filmmaking with his upcoming film ‘Club 60‘ that delves into the lives of a bunch of people aged 60.
Commenting on his drive to make it to Bollywood, Tripathy said, “I started my career as a journalist. I also produced and directed many science based shows for BBC, National Geographic and Discovery. But making films was always the final destination.”
Club 60 is about four-five oldies. They are not depressed or bored. They are not even counting their final days. They are a group of happy-go-lucky people who are members of Club 60.
Being a graduate in Physics and having created a number of science based shows, one expected a science fiction from Tripathy. But the director maintains that the film is very close to his heart as it is based on his own experience.
“It is based on my personal experience. I used to frequent a club in south Bombay. There I interacted with a bunch of fun loving, passionate oldies. I found out that they were plagued with a lot of troubles in their life but that did not deter their spirit and zeal to live life happily,” he said.
The film boasts of veteran actors like Farooque Sheikh, Sarika, Satish Shah, Tinu Anand, Raghubir Yadav and Sharat Saxena.
The film, now under production, is expected to be wrapped up in September and to release by the end of this year.
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.
