Hindi
Bigflix partners NDTV Lumiere for online film downloads
NEW DELHI: Reliance ADA Group’s online and offline movie rental service Bigflix.com and NDTV Lumiere, the world cinema channel from NDTV stable, have joined hands to enable movie downloads across India and the South Asian countries.
Thirty titles from NDTV Lumiere‘s list will be available on the site on a yearly basis at a price of $1.99 per download to rent and $4.49 per download to own.
Viewers can choose to watch films through real-time internet streaming and can alternatively download movies on their personal computers for seven days. This service will be made available across the SAARC territories, which comprises India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Maldives.
Video-on-Demand (movie downloads) business head Murtuza Kagalwala said, “We currently have access to 1500 titles and are looking at aggressively adding world class and rich content to our already existing world cinema titles.”
NDTV Imagine senior vice president – new ventures Dhruvank Vaidya added, “After the launch of the channel and the ongoing success of theatrical releases and home videos, this association with Bigflix.com is another step in our journey to present these wonderful films to audiences not just in India but also across the SAARC region.”
The association with BIGFlix.com kicks off with the release of Mika Kaurismäki‘s film library.
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.
