Hindi
Restored films should be digitalised to ensure longer life: Altaf Mazid
NEW DELHI: Joymoti, an Assamese film by the late Jyotiprasad Agarwalla, was a film far ahead of its times when made in 1935 and was inspired by movements in Russia in the 1920s, noted filmmaker Altaf Mazid said here.
Addressing a press meet at the ongoing 10th OCFF about the restoration of the film undertaken by him at his own cost because of the way he was impressed with the film, Altaf said he had been inspired to make the film when he saw a documentary on the Agarwalla 25 years ago and his curiosity was aroused.
He stated looking at the film as not just an interest state artifact, but also a nationally significant piece of Indian culture. The film was based on Lakshminath Bezbaruah’s play on the 17th century story of Sati Joymati and starred Aideu Handique and Phani Sharma.
Interestingly after much search, only one reel of the film could be found in the garage in the house then occupied by Agarwalla’s house.
Since the rights of the film lay with the Assam Government, Altaf said he had proceeded on his own and managed to collect parts of the film from various sources and restored it. He hopes the state will produce a digital print from the restored version.
Joymoti was the first film in Assamese and was also the first talkie in the state when it was released by Chitralekha Movietone in 1935.
Altaf is a critic turned filmmaker who made his first film Jibon in the mid-nineties and screened it at the International Film Festival of India in Hyderabad. It won the Director’s prize at the Seventh Pyongyang Film Festival of Non-aligned and Developing countries. Lakhtokiat Golam (Closed Door and stuff inside the magazine syndrome) was able to attract wide critical appraisal and other films include Our Common future, The Joy of Giving, Las Vegasat, and Bhal Khabar. Noting he preferred to make films on the video format because they became more personal, he said his next one is on the River Pagladia in Assam which flows down from Bhutan.
Altaf said he found that the content and the format of Joymati were very different from conventional films. The restored film has already been screened in several festivals in India and overseas including the ‘bollywood and Beyond’ in Stuttgart in Germany and in Rome and Munich. He had spent Rs 300,000 from his personal savings for the restoration and had not received any help from the government so far.
At present he is in the process of sub-titling four other Assamese films of the early era, including some of the seventies.
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.
