Hindi
Nitin Desai to start shooting Shivaji biopic this month
MUMBAI: In continuation with the recent craze of biopics, Nitin Chandrakant Desai has made one on Maharashtra‘s legendary warrior king Shivaji Maharaj. The film Raja Shivchattrapati, made after a constant demand of the viewers of the popular television serial, will go on the floors this month by Desai’s Iconic Chandrakant Productions Pvt. Ltd (ICPPL).
Raja Shivchattrapati includes eight major incidences of Shivaji that created history like birth of Shivaji, oath taken for Hindiva Swarajya at Rohideshwar temple, defeat of Afzal Khan, siege of Panhala by Siddi Jauhar, battle of Pavan Khind, attack on Shaista Khan, arrest in Agra and escape and coronation.
Talking on the launch, Desai said, “The history of India is incomplete without the history of Marathas and Shivaji is the centre of that history. We are blessed with the golden opportunity to make this epic movie and a huge privilege. We continue to live by abiding to Maharaj‘s core values as he has laid strong emphasis on culture, which is an integral part of every individual‘s life. In our effort to take Shivaji‘s values and culture globally, we have started working on a big international 3D movie on Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in Hindi and English for the global audience.”
The television show, which was aired for over 200 hours, was shot by epic technology with a vision of film quality output. It was a mammoth task for the team of ICPPL to convert the entire show into a film of 134 minutes. Except the shoot, the complete technical process had to be reworked like Dolby Digital, sound mix, colour corrections and graphics.
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.
