Hindi
Dilip Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar to receive Lifetime achievement award
NEW DELHI: Thespian Dilip Kumar, the legendary Lata Mangeshkar and veteran actress Saroja Devi will receive the Lifetime Achievement Awards to commemorate the 60th anniversary of India‘s Independence during the presentation of the 54th National Film Awards by President Pratibha Patil.
Tapan Sinha will receive the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for contribution to cinema for 2006. The Award, instituted by the Union Government, carries a cash price of Rs one million, a Swaran Kamal and a shawl.
Meanwhile, awards will be presented in 31 different categories in the feature film section and 22 categories in the non-feature film section. Three awards will also be given away for best writing on cinema.
A day after the President gives away the Awards, a festival showcasing these films will commence at the Sirifort complex in New Delhi. The films will be screened from 3 September to 12 September.
A total of 47 films will be screened during the 10-day period. Of these, 31 are feature films and 16 non-feature films.
Interestingly, the National Film Awards for 2005 were also presented early this year. This is because the process for the 53th National Awards for 2005 had got mired twice in court cases, first on the requirement of censorship and then when feature film jury member Shyamali Banerjee Deb challenged some of the awards.
From this time onwards, the prize money has been hiked five times, after President Pratibha Patil directed the government to do so during the 53rd National Awards presentation ceremony.
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.
