Hindi
Balaji to co-produce 3 films with White Feather Films
MUMBAI: Balaji Motion Pictures, the wholly owned subsidiary of Balaji Telefilms, is in the process of revamping its business. As part of that exercise, the company has roped in UTV television COO Ajit Thakur as CEO who will take charge in January, and will be putting a business plan in place.
In a bid to build momentum into the business, Balaji Motion Pictures has signed a three-film co-production deal with Sanjay Gupta‘s White Feather Films.
The three projects belong to different genres and vary from mid-to-big budgets. The films will hit the floors in 2009.
Earlier, the two companies had co-produced Shootout at Lokhandwala. Balaji has so far produced one movie, co-produced three and distributed three.
Says White Feather spokesperson Gautam Kohli, ‘‘Balaji is a valuable part of our creative plan and we hope to have a long and successful association with them. We are also in talks with UTV for co-productions. With the stupendous success of Shootout at Lokhandwala, we‘ve established a synergy with Balaji Telefilms and are confident that together we will make films which will be trail-blazers.”
Apart from Balaji, White Feather Films has also partnered with Mumbai Mantra for Acid Factory and with Eros for three films.
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.
