Hindi
Mark, Condon to guide 81st Oscar telecast
MUMBAI: Producer Laurence Mark has been tapped to produce and writer-director Bill Condon to executive produce the 81st Annual Academy Awards telecast.This was anniounced by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president Sid Ganis. It will be their first involvement in the production of an Oscar show.
Oscar nominations will be announced on 22 January, 2009. The 81st Academy Awards presentation will take place on 22 February 22, 2009. In India, the show will air on Star Movies.
Ganis says, “Larry and Bill are fresh thinkers who will bring a unique perspective to the Oscar show. That fact, joined with their enormous collective talent and enthusiasm, will serve the 81st Awards proceedings perfectly.”
In 2006, Mark produced and Condon wrote and directed Dreamgirls. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won two Oscars , including one for Jennifer Hudson for Actress in a Supporting Role.
Mark said, “What a thrill to produce the Oscar show. I’m excited about this opportunity and look forward to the challenge of a live television show that celebrates the very best in film.”
Condon said, “The Oscars are the ultimate recognition of excellent work in movies, and I’m so pleased to be part of putting the show together”.
Mark is currently in post-production on Julie and Julia starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams and written and directed by Nora Ephron for release next year. His other credits include I, Robot, The Lookout, Finding Forrester nd Jerry Maguire for which he received a Best Picture Oscar nomination. He also served as executive producer on As Good As It Gets and Working Girl.
Condon won an Oscar for writing Gods And Monsters.
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.
