Hindi
MGM ropes in Dan Kolsrud as executive vice president
MUMBAI: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (MGM) has named Dan Kolsrud as executive vice president for worldwide theatrical physical production.
Kolsrud will join EVP development Cale Boyter and vice president production Becky Sloviter to rebuild MGM‘s theatrical development, production, distribution and marketing operation.
“Dan has over 20 years of experience in line producing all types of films ranging from low budget and first-time filmmakers‘ projects to high end special effects driven movies. His familiarity with such a wide variance of films, both creatively as well as budgetary, and with directors of all levels affords him invaluable knowledge and insights that will greatly benefit our productions and filmmakers,” said MGM Worldwide Motion Picture Group Mary Parent.
“Working alongside Mary, Cale and Becky in heading up MGM‘s physical production is an exciting proposition. Everyone in this industry respects the history and contributions of MGM to the film industry, and I‘m honored to be involved in restoring the studio to its former level of production activity and influence,” Dan Kolsrud said.
Most recently, Kolsrud served as executive producer on the adaptation of Cirque du Freak, starring John C. Reilly, for Universal Pictures.
Kolsrud‘s feature film credits include co-producing Joel Schumacher‘s Falling Down and producing John Carpenter‘s Memoirs of an Invisible Man for Warner Bros.
As first assistant director, Kolsrud has worked on films like Men Don‘t Leave, Like Father, Like Son, Spaceballs, Howard the Duck, Top Gun, The Goonies, Gorky Park, Going Berserk, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ghost Story, Xanadu, Coal Miner‘s Daughter, Lace and Fatal Vision.
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.
