Hindi
New York city honours Shabana Azmi
MUMBAI: New York city has honoured legendary actress Shabana Azmi with a ‘Proclamation by the City of New York‘ for her contribution to cinema and her involvement with the movie industry there.
Azmi becomes the first Indian actor to receive the honour.
Azmi, 61, was presented with the proclamation by Patricia Kaufman, executive director of Motion Picture and Television Development from the office of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo as well as with a ‘Certificate of
Special Congressional Recognition‘ by New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney.
Describing Azmi as a “woman of extraordinary achievement hailing from a country rich in culture and traditions,” said Kaufman.
The proclamation also applauded her work as a social activist, noting that apart from being a “highly respected” advocate for social justice, she has worked tirelessly for other causes, including funding for displaced Kashmiri migrants and relief for victims of the Latur earthquake.
The proclamation added that her presence on the board of the arts organisation Indo-American Arts council (IAAC) has inspired hundreds of Indian film makers in the New York area for over a decade.
Azmi has served as an advisory board member of the annual New York Indian Film Festival, established by the IAAC in 2000. The annual film festival, which brings together feature films and documentaries from and about the Indian subcontinent, will be held this year from May 23 to 27.
Azmi lauded the IAAC and its co-founder Aroon Shivdasani for creating a space in North America for Indian and diaspora-related films.”The fact that the New York City Council recognises my work in cinema becomes a means of saying that Indian cinema is what we recognise because I am who I am because of my first primary identity of being an Indian film actor. It becomes a peg on which you can create greater visibility,” Azmi observed.
Azmi’s repertoire of international work includes John Schlesinger‘s Madame Sousatzka, Nicholas Klotz‘s Bengali Night, Roland Joffe‘s City of Joy, and Blake Edwards‘ Son of the Pink Panther.
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.
