Hindi
10 semifinalists in Academy, MTV’s Oscar Correspondent Contest
MUMBAI: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Ampas) in the US and mtvU, which is the music broadcaster‘s college network, have announced that ten teams of college journalists are semifinalists in the first Oscar Correspondent Contest.
Each contestant is vying for a position on the red carpet at the 81st Academy Awards in Los Angeles on 22 February 2009.
Video entries from the semifinalist teams are posted online where students and other viewers can vote for their favorite college journalists until 6 February.
On 9 February the three teams with the most online votes, and as agreed upon by the Academy and mtvU, will advance to the final round of competition, with online voting from 9-20 February. All three finalist teams will be flown to Los Angeles to cover Academy Awards pre-events, including the Animated Feature Symposium, Foreign Language Film Award Nominees Symposium, the Makeup Artist and Hairstylist Symposium and the Governors Ball preview.
The Grand Prize team will be revealed on 20 February at an Academy press conference, and awarded a spot on the red carpet for the 81st Academy Awards arrivals as well as credentials for access to backstage press rooms. The two other teams will receive bleacher seats along the red carpet and admission to an Oscar viewing party.
The ten semi-finalist teams were selected by the Academy and mtvU from videos submitted for the competition. These entries were judged based on equally weighted criteria including originality, creativity, and by which entries were most compelling. The competition was open to teams of two college students, one anchor and one videographer, residing in the United States.
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.
