Hindi
Michael York, Paul Verhoeven honoured for contribution to world cinema
ANTALYA: A day after the 45th Altin Portakal (Golden Orange) Film Festival got underway, the Fourth International Eurasian Film Festival commenced here with the presentation of lifetime achivement awards to some renowned personalities of world cinema and the screening of the opening film.
Conducted by actress Azra Akin, awards were presented to renowned genius storyteller and master director Paul Verhoeven, actor Michael York and Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner.
The inaugural ceremony commenced with a concert by renowned musicians Barbaros Erköse and Ilhan Ersahin. It ended with the screening of the opening film, the Turkish-Italian co-production A Perfect Day by Ferzan Özpetek.
Speaking at the ceremony, Engin Yigitgil who is President of the TURSAK Foundation which organizes the Festival, said the festival was a passionate journey for cinema under the banner of a festival which reconciled three continents.
The Festival’s Honorary President and the Mayor of Antalya Metropolitan Municipality Menderes Türel said the festival had led to greater competition and improvement of the standard of Turkish films and also covered a large geographical area in terms of countries participating.
Paul Verhoeven who is also heading the Grand Jury at the Festival said he was working on a film set in Turkey and had already been looking for locations in Antalya and Istanbul.
The other members of the Grand Competition Jury, the NETPAC Jury, the Critics’ Award jury and the SIYAD juries were also announced. Majid Majidi, 2008 Golden Bear nominee with his latest movie The Song of Sparrows, and Cameron Bailey, co-director of Toronto International Film Festival are also members of the jury which will vote for the “Best Film” and the “Best Director” categories of the competition section.
Tuna Erdem of Turkey and Raman Chawla of India are members of the Network for Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC) jury, while the critics jury are Engin Ertan, Asli Selçuk, Burcu Aykar Sirin, and Ceylan Ozçelik.
The Grand jury will be presenting two awards: $ 75,000 for the “Best Film” and $ 25,000 for the “Best Director”.
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.
