Hindi
Exposition of panorama 2007 commences in Delhi
NEW DELHI: A Festival of 21 features and 15 non-features which were selected for the Indian Panorama 2007 of the International Film Festival of India commenced in the capital today.
The 8-day exposition organized by the Directorate of Film Festivals opened with Bagher Bacha, a non-feature film in Bangla directed by Bishnu Dev Halder, a former student of the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, Kolkata. It was followed by Ore Kadal in Malayalam directed by Shyamaprasad. Entry to all film shows is free.
This package of Indian Panorama presents a wide spectrum of contemporary themes and treatments. The debut directors like Sameer Hanchate, Bhavana Talwar and Samir Chanda bring with them a refreshing and incisive style of cinema, while the stalwarts like Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Budhadeb Dasgupta challenge ideas and established norms again with their films, Naalu Penungal and Ami Iyasin Aar Amaar Madhubala.
The non-feature film section offers a large variety. The biographicals like Naushad Ali, Pandit Ramnarayan, Mubarak Begum and Rajarshi Bhagyachandra of Manipur chronicle the lives of important Indian personalities. Films like Bagher Bacha, Hope Dies Last in War, Joy Ride and whose Land Is It Anyway are stimulating. The Indian Panorama 2007 presents a wide spectrum of contemporary themes and treatments.
The Indian Panorama package was selected by two juries of eminent film makers. The feature film jury was headed by KS Sethumadhavan, and members included Leslie Carvalho, Dr. Mrunalinni Patil Dayal, Manju Bora, Shubhra Gupta and Abhijit Dasgupta. The non-feature film jury was headed by another renowned film maker Arun Khopkar and members included Pankaj Butalia, Gautam Saikia and Kavita Chaudhary.
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.
