Hindi
Moving Picture partners with Movico Technologies to digitise content
MUMBAI: Moving Picture Company India (MPC) has partnered with Movico Technologies to digitize, promote and sell archival footage through Movico‘s new video aggregation website.
MPC owns approximately 12,000 hours of video footage that include travel destinations, exotic locations, political events, profiles of Bollywood stars, celebrities, music performances and stock footage from India, Afghanistan and Bhutan.
Movico will undertake the digitization, classification and repurposing of footage that will allow Moving Picture Company to easily access the video library for its own production use. It will also help the company make select footage, available for worldwide sale, to other content producers.
Movico Technologies is a video software startup that integrates key video, mobile, PC and internet technologies to build next generation video software products to serve the needs of video producers and distributors.
Said Movico Technologies director and co-founder V.N. Saroja, “The deal has been divided into two segments. In the first segment, we will digitise and catalogue MPC footage, identify the best pieces and repurpose the same for sale. For providing this service, we will receive payment on cost per hour basis. The second phase includes marketing of the repurosed footage, which will be available on our website. The revenue generated will then be shared between us and MPC,” she added.
Adding further, MPC chairman and MD Ramesh Sharma said, “We have always believed our library has great value waiting to be unlocked, and this partnership with Movico will allow us to tap both the Indian and the global market.”
Also, Movico has tied up with several international stock footage websites for cross-promotions. Besides, it has tied-up with international producers for stock footage consumption and with content distribution platforms for global delivery.
Movico has plans to create a sophisticated, tightly integrated, multi-purpose video production, storage and broadcast management system capable of handling enterprise class loads. Hence, to materialize the same, the company is aiming to invest $1 million in the project.
Additionally, the company also intends to raise $5 million this year to strengthen its portfolio of product, service, and aggregation, targeted at the video content market.
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.
