Hindi
Colours of Konkan bags three awards at IDPA
MUMBAI: Nishtha Jain‘s Lakshmi and Me which had been screened at the recent IAWRT Film Festival in Delhi, received the Gold Award for the best documentary while five films received more than one honours each at the annual awards of the Indian Documentary Producers Association (IDPA).
The Gold Award in the Best Short Fiction of a Director category was received for Lost and Found by Harshwardhan G Kulkarni. His film Colours of Konkan: MTDL also got three awards: Excellence in Scriptwriting for an advertising film, Best Corporate Film for Tailormade Films, and Best cinematography for Navneet Misser.
Our Family by K P Jayasankar and Dr Anjali Monteiro received the Gold for sound design (fiction and non-fiction) and script-writing (fiction and non-fiction) and Silver for editing. Lost and Found got the Silver for Navneet Misser for cinematography.
The animation film Manpasand by Dhvani Desai, based on a Panchantra tale which received the Gold Remi at the recent 41st Houston International Film Festival 2008 in the United States, was given the Silver Award in the Best Short Fiction of a Director Category.
The Power of Five by Vijay Singh Tomar received two awards: Gold for Excellence in Editing and Silver for Best Corporate Film.
Harvlele Indradhanush (The Lost Rainbow) by Dhiraj Meshram received the Gold for Best Short fiction film and Silver for Excellence in Script writing (fiction and non-fiction). Vijay Singh Tomar also got the Silver for Editing for 3 Lives. Shivendra Singh got the Silver for best commercial for two films: Havells CFL Rimpoche and Greenply Courtroom.
The other Gold Awards are: Excellence in Sound Design (advertising) to R Anand for Sony Pix, best public service film is ‘The staircase’ by George Mangalath Thomas,
Best commercial is VIP Underwear Adjust by Shivendra Singh, excellence in animation (fiction and non-fiction) for ‘Ostrich’ by Priya Kuriyan, excellence in animation (advertising) shared by Ooga Booga and Ultratech Cement by Vaibhav Studio and Aara (The Fix) respectively, best cell story Memory Space by Dr K P Jayasankar, excellence in short fiction (students) to the Shop that sold Everythingby Abhyuday Khaitan, documentary (students) to Chasing Angelina Jolie by Saurav Dey, cinematography (fiction and non-fiction) to Hope Dies Last in War by Ranjan Palit and S Chkalingam, and editing to Tanvir Ka Safarnama by Arjun Gourisaria and Sukanya Ghosh.
The IDPA-ONGC Gold Award for the Best Film in Environment went to Kali Bein (The Black River) by Surendra Manan and the Silver went to Death Knell the Nilgri‘s biosphere by Maya Jaideep & K G Vasuki.
The Silver Awards went to: Best Documentary Minukku by M R Rajan; Excellence in Cinemarography (advertising) to Tata Indigo – XL by Ravi K Chandran’; sound design (advertising) for The Phenomenon by Paul Jacob; script-writing (advertising) to Little Boy by Deepti Chawla; public service to Help Age by Bappaditya Roy Pictures; animation (Fiction and Non-Fiction) shared by Shadi ka Ghoda by Vivekananda Roy Ghatak and Myths About You by Nandita Jain; Cell story to Anti-Smoking by Aditya Sam Abraham’; short fiction (students) to Dead End by Shashank Khaitan; documentary (students) for Casting Shadow by Nayantara Kotian; and sound design (fiction and non-fiction) by Poomaram Or A Flowering Tree by Vipin Vijay.
Certificates of Merit went to Dr K P Jayasankar and Dr Anjali Monteiro; Vipin Vijay; Rajendra Janglay; and for ‘Reprise’ to Kush, Shubhangi Singh, and Saeed Vahidi.
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.
