Hindi
Film City in Mumbai set for revamp
MUMBAI: The Dadasaheb Phalke Chitranagari, popularly known as Film City, is soon to be spruced up. The Maharashtra government has decided to equip it with state-of-the-art facilities. It also intends to make the film shooting facility a tourist spot on the lines of the Ramoji Rao Film City in Hyderabad.
Said Film City spokesperson Saini, “There are some development plans that we have just started working on. It’s an ongoing process and will take some time before it gets implemented. We will first set a committee that will wholly work on the master plan.”
A final decision will be taken within 20 days.
“We also want it to become a sought after tourist spot. However, we won‘t open the entire Film City for tourism purposes. There will be just few places that will be open to the general public,” the spokesperson added.
The government has decided to equip it with lavish and state-of-the-art sets to make it a one-stop for filmmakers. Special arrangements will be made for tourists to have access to shoots.
Besides, a Bollywood museum is being planned.
The Film City, situated in the northern suburb of Goregaon, was built by Maharashtra government’s department of cultural affairs and was inaugurated on 26 September, 1977. Initially known as the Maharashtra Film Stage and Cultural Development Corporation, it was renamed in 2001 as the Dadasaheb Phalke Chitranagari.
Among the recent films that were shot at Film City are Devdas, Ready and Bodyguard among others. The ongoing TV show Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) is also being shot there.
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.
