Hindi
Films division to mark diamond jubilee with festivals across India
NEW DELHI: The Films Division is set to celebrate its Diamond Jubilee with festivals of its films in different parts of the country. The celebration will start in the national capital Delhi and conclude in Mumbai.
Around 60 short films will be screened during the four-day festival from 12 June at the Films Division Auditorium in Delhi, to be inaugurated by Information and Broadcasting minister Priyaranjan Dasmunsi. The duration of the films ranges from four minutes to just over one hour.
The films will be based on the freedom movement including the ‘Great Salt March’, unexplored tourist spots in India, social issues and the environment. This also includes a film on India’s quest in the Antartica.
Films based on biographicals and historical studies include those on renowned personalities like Mirza Ghalib, Mohammed Iqbal, Mahakavi Bharti, Indira Gandhi, Gautam Buddha, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Sohrab Modi, Raj Kapoor, Nargis, Rabindranath Tagore, Amrita Shergil, Tenzing, Bhimsen Joshi, sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, Homi Bhabha, Pandit Ramnarayan and Ustad Amjad Ali Khan.
Films Division Chief Producer Kuldeep Sinha told a news conference here that the Division had digitised all its films and was now “working to create an international digital archive.”
Faced with the cinema houses still refusing to show its films despite a Supreme Court directive with only Doordarshan showing some of them, he said that the Division had also applied to the ministry for launching its own documentary television channel.
He stated that the Division was working towards popularising its films at three levels: the state level, the ten cities where it has branch offices, and in schools through festivals.
He also claimed that the Division was now working towards an aggressive marketing policy.
Though the British government had its own unit for documentary films, it was shut down in 1946. The Division was initiated by Jawaharlal Nehru in April 1948. Sinha regretted that because of this, there was no documentary record of the celebrations following the declaration of independence in August 1947.
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.
