Hindi
Pix launches film-based reality show with Whistling Woods
MUMBAI: After months of preparation, English movie channel PIX is all set to kick off its film-based reality show Gateway. The show goes on air next month.
For this, the channel has tied up with filmmaker Subhash Ghai’s film training institute Whistling Woods International. The show will give the winner a chance to direct a Hollywood film with Ashok Amritraj as producer.
The 12-episode show is being shot at the Whistling Woods campus from today. It will make use of the infrastructure and technology that the institute offers. The channel claims to have chosen 18 contestants from among 1,000 aspirants. The chosen ones will be put through a variety of tasks. Besides Amritraj, the judges include filmmakers Anurag Basu (Gangster, Life in a Metro) and Rajat Kapoor (director of Bheja Fry and Mixed Doubles). Milind Soman’s production company Face Entertainment is producing the show for PIX.
The winner of the show will receive an eight-week internship in Los Angeles with Ashok Amritraj‘s company Hyde Park Entertainment. In Hollywood, he will learn about film making as well as the business practices and challenges involved, whereupon he will start making a film.
“I am confident that the winner of the show will make an impact abroad. After all, young filmmakers are increasingly getting exposed to international culture and international films. They can tell the difference between, for example, a French film and a Spanish film. I hope that Ashok and I can take this partnership forward where maybe our students can get involved,” says Ghai.
Amritraj notes that the facilities available at Whistling Woods compare with what is offered abroad in places like UCLA. He says that the tasks that participants will perform on the show will give viewers an idea of how the process works in Hollywood.
“I am looking for a director with heart and passion. He must be a contemporary filmmaker capable of producing cutting-edge work. This work must be able to survive in a digital world as that is where the entertainment industry is heading towards,” adds Amritraj.
Vodafone, Westside, Sony Handycam and Swift have partnered with PIX for the show. The channel‘s business head Sunder Aaron notes that the show is in line with the channel‘s aim to celebrate the craft of filmmaking.
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.
