Hindi
Hanuman Da’ Damdaar….Kid stuff
Hanuman and Ganesh seem to be the most popular figures / gods for Indian animation filmmakers. Also, among them, the favourite theme is the two idols’ childhood because that allows a maker to spin any convenient story around them.
Also, dealing with one character keeps budgets in control unlike making an animated Ramayana or Mahabharata.
For any such animated film, its claim to fame is which all renowned film actors lent their voice, to dub for the animated characters. Hanuman Da’ Damdaar boasts of quite a celebrity list landing its voice to the animated characters.
The little Hanuman is back from one more dangerous adventure after which a curfew is imposed on him. He can’t leave home. But, you can’t keep Hanuman down for long, and off he is on another adventure. He is now the mighty Hanuman the myth about him has told us all along.
There was a lineup of such animation films a few years ago and the flooding did not help anybody’s cause. Hanuman Da’ Damdaar tries to be different in that it is some renowned film personalities giving voice to the animated characters. They include Salman Khan, Javed Akhtar, Raveena Tandon, Makarand Deshpande, Hussain Dalal and Kunal Kemmu.
The film also takes the contemporary language today’s youth use in its efforts to add humour.
The film boasts of good animation generally while music is also a help. Where it lacks is in content as it has nothing exciting to tell or add to match the persona of the legend, Hanuman, from earlier such attempts.
Producers: Ashutosh Shah, Taher Shabbir, Ruchi Narain.
Direction: Ruchi Narain.
Cast/Voice: Salman Khan, Javed Akhtar, Raveena Tandon, Makarand Deshpande, Hussain Dalal and Kunal Kemmu.
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.
