Hindi
Film investors, filmmakers to be on a single platform on 27 April in Mumbai
MUMBAI: On the occasion of the ‘International Conference on Film Finance’, to be held for the first time in India at Mumbai on 27 April, the Banknet Group and Six Sigma Films are set to bring film investors and filmmakers on a single platform.
The main goal of the conference will be to educate equity and debt financiers on film business opportunities while mitigating risks; provide producers with effective approaches to fundraising, and offer filmmakers several ways to create viable content and distribution options to generate revenue.
The conference will have specialised sessions with presentations and interactive panel discussions on various issues like film/TV financing; monetisation of scripts; trends in film financing; cash flow in film projects; film insurance; managing risks in film production; film distribution network; co-production and co-financing; and entertainment technologies.
The event will have the participation from private equity and hedge funds; venture capitalists; high net worth and angel investors; film investors, bankers and lenders; financiers; producers; directors; studio executives and technology experts from Asia-Pacific, UK and the US.
Premier film industry associations like Western India Film Producers’ Association and Indian Film Exporters Association (Indian Council of Impex for Films & TV Programmers) as well as leading film journal Complete Cinema are supporting the conference. IndianTelevision.com is online media partner.
Banknet Group is India’s leading research, analyst and online media channel for financial services and technology with community of over 1,00,000 professionals worldwide.
Six Sigma Films is a production house, which believes in an open and collaborative approach and aims to deliver creative and innovative cinema and advertising with the highest integrity and professionalism to achieve global standards. It has community of 8,000+ media and entertainment professionals.
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.
