Hindi
Delhi’s Japanese film fest to screen ‘Summer Days With Coo’
NEW DELHI: The Japanese Film Festival, which commenced as a part of the Second Delhi International Arts Festival (DIAF), is set to screen children’s film Summer Days with Coo, directed by Hara Keiichi.
The film is about a mythological character in Japanese folk tales.
The other films that are to be screened during the festival include The Village Album by Mihara Mitsuhiro, The Professor and His Beloved Equation by Koizumi Takashi, Memories of Tomorrow by Tsutsumi Yukihiko, What The Snow Brings by Negishi Kichitaro, and Heaven Can Wait, Maybe… by Toki Yoshitaka.
The Japanese film festival, which opened with the screening of I just didn’t do it by Suo Masayuki, will be followed by two festivals from 11 December – the much awaited screening of the 26 features in the Indian Panorama screened recently at Goa, and the ‘Twilight’ Competitive Film Festival of student and professional films, and a three-day Children’s Film Festival from 22 December.
The Indian Panorama has been organised by the DIAF in association with the Directorate of Film Festivals. Opening with the screening of ‘Little Zizou’, the inauguration will have director Sooni Taraporevala, actor Imad Shah and Shernaz Patel.
Simultaneously, the Twilight Film Festival, organised by the Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts and Communication exclusively meant for short films in India, will open at the India Islamic Culture Centre in Delhi. The festival will close on 15 December with the eminent Shyam Benegal giving away the prizes for the competitions of students’ films and professionals’ films. The screenings of around 60 films are being held in Alliance Francaise.
The film segment of the DIAF concludes with the screening of six children’s films at Sirifort II from 22 to 24 December. This is DIAF’s outreach programme for schools and children including street-children. Children will have an opportunity to interact with the directors and filmmakers.
Apart from the Film Festivals being held as part of the DIAF, the 4th India International Women Film Festival started from 7 December and will continue till 14 December with films and seminars on the subject of women empowerment, women behind the camera, and portrayal of women on screen.
The Delhi International Arts Festival (DIAF) was started last year to highlight the “rich and diverse cultural heritage” of the national capital.
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.
