Hindi
Kasthuri, Airtel present Pyramid Saimira Kannada Cinegandha awards 2007
BANGALORE: The 74th year of Kannada cinema will see two film award ceremonies on back to back Sundays in early March, both at the same venue – the Bangalore Palace grounds.It will be promoted and broadcast by two Kannada channels.
The first one, Airtel Pyramid Saimira Cinegandha awards 2007, is to be held on 2 March. This was announced by Kannada channel Kasthuri and Pyramid Saimira in Bangalore.
Earlier, Sunfeast-Udaya had announced the Sunfeast Udaya TV awards to be held on 9 March. Year 2007, which saw a number of Kannada films hitting the jackpot at the box office, is being touted as the golden era for Kannada cinema by Kasthuri TV – a channel headed by Anitha Kuamaraswamy’s Kasthuri Media (KMPL) who is the wife of former Karnataka chief minister Kumaraswamy.
Eighteen categories of awards have been announced. Besides, there are special awards – Saptaswara awards to seven music directors; Snehasanjeevi awards to four Kannada film personalities as well as the Dr. Rajkumar Trinetra awards to his sons Shivrajkumar, Raghavendra Rajkumar and Puneeth Rajkumar.
KMPL claims that it has appropriated weightage to various parameters for determining the nominations and the winners, some of which are: A jury comprising of actor Srinath, veteran journalist P G Srinivas Murthy, Karnataka Film Chambers of Commerce secretary Thomas D’Souza, Karnataka censor board panel members Srinivas Christa and Girija Mahesh; the films performance at the box office; SMS votes; data collected from randomly picked 2000 people from each district of the state. Next year, Pyramid Saimira’s Saminathan plans to bring in actual count of viewers and their votes – from around 1.5 million cinegoers.
Besides key sponsors Airtel and Pyramid Saimira, Kasthuri has roped in other national and regional sponsors including Frito Lays and Venkateshwara Textiles. Big FM which came in late, is the radio partner.
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Sunfeast & Udaya announce Kannada Awards 2006
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.
