Hindi
Dharmendra, Rishi Kapoor, Gulzar win big at MAMI
MUMBAI: Veteran actor Dharmendra received the Lifetime Achievement award and Rishi Kapoor was acclaimed for his significant contribution to cinema for over 35 years at the concluding ceremony of the Mumbai Academy of Moving Images‘ (MAMI) 10th International Film Festival, Mumbai.
The first Global Lifetime Achievement award was given to Carlos Saura, a renowned Spanish filmmaker, while lyricist-filmmaker Gulzar was conferred an award for outstanding contribution to Indian film music.
Acknowleding the award, Kapoor said: ‘‘Usually film industry personalities do not reveal their age, but I want to say that I have not been working for 25 years – I have been working for 35 years and I am proud of that.‘‘
On receiving the award, Gulzar said: ‘‘Each artist needs this kind of reassurance to prove that whatever he has been doing is right.‘‘
Speaking to the media, MAMI festival chairman Shyam Benegal expressed confidence that this festival had now come to stay in the metropolis and the current edition had been better than the previous ones.
A total of 140 films from 45 countries were showcased in the festival, held from 6-13 March. They included 92 films showcased in the Global Vision section. The foreign and Indian retrospectives were devoted to films by Andrej Wajda and
Ritwik Ghatak, respectively. The country in focus was China and the filmmaker in focus was Carlos Saura.
The chief guest of the event, evergreen Bollywood star Dev Anand, senior filmmaker Yash Chopra, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, and Shyam Benegal gave away the awards.
The Kodak award for technical excellence in sound recording was presented to Hitendra Ghosh who has been in the industry for more than 25 years and has worked on about 1,800 films.
In a new concept called Dimensions Mumbai, five-minute films based on different aspects of Mumbai were showcased by aspiring filmmakers under 25 years of age. A total of 82 entries had been received for this section.
S Srinivasan‘s Vapsi, based on the hardships a young aspiring actor faces in Mumbai, bagged the top prize while Aishwarya S got the second prize for Mumbai Half Marathon and Ganesh More bagged the third prize for a film on life in Mumbai.
The awards carrying cash components of Rs 100,000, Rs 30,000 and Rs 20,000 were sponsored by Jaya Bachchan, and given away by her daughter-in-law Aishwarya. The special jury awards were given to Handful of Sky by Neha Singh and Patri by Akshara Prabhakar.
In the Indian feature film competition, Darsheel Safary was awarded for playing the dyslexic child Ishaan Awasthi in Taare Zameen Par, Swathee Sen for playing Janki in Antardwand while both the best film and International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) awards were bagged by the Marathi film Tingya by Mangesh Hadawale on the delicate issue of farmers‘ suicides.
Frozen, which is the first full-length feature film to be shot in Ladakh, won the Special Jury Award for its director Shivaji Chandrabhushan.
Tina Ambani, representing Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group that sponsored the Festival, MAMI Trustee Kiran Shantaram, Manmohan Shetty, festival artistic director Sudhir Nandgaonkar, Yash Chopra, Ranbir Kapoor along with mother Neetu Kapoor, Indian Documentary Producers‘ Association president Jahnu Barua, Amit Khanna of Reliance Entertainment, filmmaker Vinod Pande and several other celebrities were present on the occasion. The event was conducted by television star Gaurav Kapoor, and singer Mansi Scott also performed at the function with English and Hindi songs.
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.
