Hindi
Hollywood making too many sequels: Coppola
ANTALYA: Renowned Hollywood director Francis Ford Coppola feels there are too many films being made in Hollywood which are either sequels, re-makes or repetitive and this is leading to skyrocketing budgets.
He has therefore been wanting to give a new kind of experience to his viewers and that was the reason for his long hiatus from filmmaking. 
Speaking about the extensive use of Sanskrit in his latest film Youth Without Youth screened at the ongoing International Eurasia Film Festival here, he said that tales told in ancient Indian scriptures in Sanskrit are very simple myths in themselves but hold very deep meaning. These tales showed a larger philosophical aspect to life than the western mind often comprehended.
Youth Without Youth (his first movie since The Rainmaker in 1997) has used Sanskrit shlokas and dialogues as a major highlight of the film. The film is a metaphysical story about a 70-year old professor Dominic Matei (played by Tim Roth) who gets magical powers that transform him back to a 30-year old youngster after he is hit by a bolt of lightening on Easter Sunday in 1938.
The Nazis learn about this and want him, and he has to escape by taking on a new identity. And his own dreams of unfulfilled love torment him since he had not been able to marry the woman he had loved in his younger days. This gets fulfilled when he finds a mystical woman who appears to hang between her present and past lives.
Coppola adapted, produced and directed the film based on the 1976 novel by Romanian-born religious historian and philosopher Mircea Eliade. The film also stars Alexandra Maria Lara, Bruno Ganz, Andre M Hennicke, Marcel Iures, and introduces Alexandra Pirici while Matt Damon makes a special appearance.
Speaking about the research involved and the extensive use of Sanskrit and the shooting experiences in India, Coppola said that Mircea Eliade was a renowned Orientalist. The film, which has been shot mostly in Romania, also has some sequences shot in Mumbai.
“While writing a screenplay, I was also assessing my own place in cinema. I was already 65 and did not know what my place was and what I should do,” he said earlier, addressing a press conference.
When he saw the story by Mircea Eliade, he thought it was like the story of Faust and he liked the interesting ideas of existence, and re-birth.
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.
