Hindi
Reliance Big Pictures to release 18 films in 2009
MUMBAI: Reliance Big Pictures has chalked out a 18-movie slate for 2009 release, defying scale back plans announced by some other big film producers.
Being part of the mega plan to produce 70 movies over three years, Big Pictures will roll out 11 Hindi films in 2009 while the other seven films will be in five regional languages.
“We are in course with our targets and there is no slowdown from our side. We will be releasing 18 movies in 2009,” Big Pictures COO Mahesh Ramanathan tells Indiantelevision.com.
To set the ball rolling on the Hindi front, Big Pictures will release the big budget Hindi film Luck By Chance, a co-production with Excel entertainment slated to hit theatres on 30 January. The film marks the directorial debut of Zoya Akhtar starring Farhan Akhtar, Juhi Chawla, Konkana Sen, Rishi Kapoor, Dimple Kapadia and Hritik Roshan in a special appearance.
This will be followed by releases like Sikander, 13 B, Mirch and Chaloo Movie. “We will have two movies – Chaloo Movie and Sikander – in the low-budget (below Rs 100 million) category,” says Ramanathan.
13 B, a supernatural thriller with Madhavan and Neetu Chandra as the lead protagonists, will be made in both Hindi and Tamil. The film is being directed by Vikram.
Directed by Piyush Jha, Sikandar has Sanjay Suri, R. Madhavan, Ayesha Kapoor and Parzaan Dastur.
“We will additionally have six Hindi co-productions for the year 2009 which we will announce over time,” says Ramanathan.
On the regional front, the production arm has a slate of three Bengali films- Shob Choritra Kalponik, Abohomann and Janala. While Shob Choritra Kalponik and Abohomann are being directed by Rituparno Ghosh, Janala will be directed by Buddhadeb Dasgupta.
The other movies that belong to the Big Pictures regional basket include Shaji N. Karun’s Kutty Srank (Malayalam), MS Sathyu’s Ijjodu (Kannada), Amol Palekar’s Samaantar (Marathi) and Simerjit Singh’s Chak Jawana (Punjabi).
Reliance Big Pictures, the motion pictures brand of Reliance Big Entertainment, is currently busy in releasing the Aamir Khan starrer Ghajini internationally across 300 cinemas in 22 countries on 25 December.
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.
