Hindi
Government committed to preserve cinematic heritage: I&B Secy
PANAJI: Information and Broadcasting Secretary Uday Kumar Varma has said film posters and ancillaries are a treasure of the country‘s film heritage and the government is committed to preserve this heritage for the future generations to appreciate.
Speaking to mediapersons after inaugurating an exhibition on ‘Music & Songs in Indian Cinema‘ by the National Film Archives of India, he said today‘s generation which is used to e-posters finds it difficult to believe that people were crazy about posters of films released in yesteryears.
Goa Chief Secretary of Goa Sanjay Srivastava, Goa Information Secretary Rajiv Verma, and I&B Joint Secretary DP Reddy were present on the occasion.
Goa Chief Minister Digamber Kamat also visited after the inauguration of the exhibition being held to coincide with the International Film Festival of India.
Music and Songs are integral to Indian cinema since sound came in 1931. Technological developments in sound across the years have been highlighted in this exhibition. The contribution of music directors, singers and lyricists has been discussed. All the exhibits are accompanied with bilingual captions.
Meanwhile, Bollywood actor Jackie Shroff inaugurated the ‘Actors Lounge‘ and the ‘Director‘s Lounge‘ at the IFFI Campus.
A special addition to this year‘s cinematic journey of IFFI, the lounges will act as the comfort point for the cinematic luminaries and will provide a venue to relax, meet and network with industry colleagues.
Entertainment Society of Goa CEO Manoj Srivastava said “The Director‘s and Actor‘s Lounge act as a relax zone for our distinguished guests and provide comfort to the stalwarts while they are at IFFI. A platform where creative minds connect and network, the lounges act as the artistic zone of the festival and thus are counted amongst the main attractions in this 42nd IFFI.”
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.
