Hindi
Sahara One Motion Pictures’ ‘Mumbai Cutting’ to screen at IFFLA
MUMBAI: Sahara One Motion Pictures‘ Mumbai Cutting… A City unfolds has been selected for the closing night of the The Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA) festival.
To be held in Los Angeles, the festival will run from 22 to 27 April at ArcLight Hollywood.
Mumbai Cutting… A City unfolds has been directed by 11 directors and the music is also composed by 11 music directors. Mumbai Cutting is co-produced by White Clouds.
Sahara One Media and Entertainment head Seemanto Roy said, “Sahara One Motion Pictures looks at promoting Indian talent globally with cutting edge concepts in cinema. Mumbai Cutting, in association with White Clouds, is a move towards forging our relationships with them.”
The film unfolds various facets of this metro city that is known for absorbing newer cultures and merging them into its own.
Sudhir Mishra, Rahul Dholakia, Revati, Rituparno Ghosh, Kundan Shah, Anurag Kashyap, Shashanka Ghosh, Ruchi Narain, Jahanu Barua, Manish Jha and Ayush Raina are the 11 directors.
The movie stars Soha Ali Khan, Jimmy Shergil, Sonali Kulkarni, Ranvir Sheorey, Vinay Pathak, Sushant Singh, Tara Sharma, Tejaswini Kolhapure, Raima Sen, Palash Sen, Shruti Seth, Rahul Dev, Deepak Dobriyal, Dipannita Sharma, Kavita Kaushik, Samrin, Sanjay Narvekar, Mahek Chel among others.
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.
