Hindi
Jason Spivak is SPHE senior VP, strategic development
MUMBAI: Jason Spivak has joined Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (SPHE) in the US as senior VP, strategic development. Additionally, Noam Meppen has been promoted to VP, retail promotions and merchandising and Jamie Glinsky to executive director, strategic development.
Spivak will head the strategic group for the division. He will be instrumental in growing SPHE’s revenue at traditional retail channels through creative distribution and space deals, as well as guiding the company’s presence within the expanding home entertainment marketplace. He will report to SPHE US‘s senior executive VP Marshall Forster.
Meppen will manage and develop SPHE’s retail marketing and merchandising departments. He and his respective teams will work with SPHE sales, marketing and operations groups in addition to theatrical marketing, consumer products and third-party partners, to ensure the effective execution of all sales programmes and strategies at retail.
Meppen previously managed the Target account for SPHE where he drove revenues and created successful, large-scale catalogue promotional holiday events that increased SPHE’s share of Target’s home entertainment business.
Glinsky will continue to play an instrumental role in the development of the manufacturing on demand (MOD) business and will work closely with Spivak on the expansion of SPHE’s presence through traditional and emerging home entertainment channels.
SPHE senior executive VP US Marshall Forster says, “With their proven expertise, I am confident Jason, Noam and Jamie will tackle the challenges the marketplace presents and implement smart business practices that will achieve our company’s strategic goals.”
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.
