Hindi
Adlabs Cinemas to present animated series during movie intervals
MUMBAI: Adlabs Cinemas in association with animation studio Future Thought Productions is bringing a short film series called Crime Time to all its theatres.
Each animated film, of less than two minutes in duration, will be played during intermission with new episodes being introduced on a periodic basis.
The original series will debut in all Adlabs cinemas later this month.
The animated series will also be extended to mobile, cable and satellite platforms.
Crime Time is a series of stories that involve Shifty (The Criminal), a pint-sized pilferer with lofty ambitions and limited brainpower. He perpetrates crimes from the sublime to the ridiculous – never quite pulling them off and resulting in hilarious consequences.
Adlabs Cinemas COO Tushar Dhingra said, “The idea was to fully engage our audience at all times including intermission, and also to provide original content, putting our own distinctive stamp on the movie-viewing experience. We are looking at extending Crime Time to mobile, cable and satellite platforms as well.”
“Crime Time has proven to be a popular property with distribution throughout Europe, the US, Australasia and Latin America. We are delighted to bring this property to viewers in India exclusively through Adlabs”, said Future Thought Productions founder Jay Zaveri.
Future Thought Productions is an animation studio involved in the development and production of animated content for film, television, web and the mobile space.
Some of the clients and partners include Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros, MTV, Nickelodeon, UNICEF and product companies such as Pepsi, Procter & Gamble, Cadbury, Orange and Unilever, among many others.
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.
