Hindi
Shemaroo taps Studio Canal’s films for home video
MUMBAI: The home video distributor Shemaroo Entertainment has licensed 70 titles from Studio Canal, a subsidiary of the French Pay TV Group Canal+.
Shemaroo will distribute these 70 titles on home video in SAARC countries – India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Maldives.
A two decade old player, Shemaroo is a big operator of domestic Indian films. With this deal, the company boosts its presence in the international film category.
Shemaroo Entertainment director Hiren Gada said, “We are glad to be associated with Studio Canal and license some of their phenomenal films for home video distribution. Given our strong distribution network in the mainstream Hindi film category, we will be able to give a good boost and widespread distribution to these titles.”
Meanwhile, for the first time in India, some of the major titles’ DVD will have the extra feature of 5.1 surround sound.
StudioCanal Home Entertainment EVP Francoise Guyonnet said, “It has been a pleasure working with Shemaroo Entertainment from the very start. We are confident they will be the best partners for the distribution of our titles throughout India.”
Some of the major titles Shemaroo has licensed are Rambo Triology, Basic Instinct, Terminator 2, Cliffhanger, Red Sonja, Total Recall, Serpico, Murder on the Orient Express, Universal Soldier, Raw Deal, Lock-Up, Escape from New York, Red Heat, The Graduate, four titles from Carry on Series and Air America among others.
Shemaroo claims of acquiring close to 300 titles, across all genres. Studio Canal holds the largest non US film library with 5186 titles.
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.
