Hindi
Sean Penn to head Cannes jury
MUMBAI: Oscar winner Sean Penn has been named president of the jury of the 61st Festival de Cannes 2008.
“In the last few years, it seems there has been a rejuvenation of cinema building worldwide. The Cannes Film Festival has long been the epicentre in the discovery of those new waves of filmmakers from all over the world. I very much look forward to participating in this year‘s festival as president of the jury,” Penn declared, while accepting the invitation extended by Gilles Jacob and Thierry Frémaux, heads of the Cannes festival.
Penn, who has become an American film icon in a career spanning nearly three decades, won the Best Male Performance Prize at the Festival de Cannes in 1997 for She‘s so Lovely by Nick Cassavetes. He has been nominated four times for the Academy Award as Best Actor: in Tim Robbins‘ Dead Man Walking, Woody Allen‘s Sweet and Lowdown, Jessie Nelson‘s I am Sam, and won the Oscar in 2004 for his performance in Clint Eastwood‘s Mystic River, which was presented in competition at Cannes. Moreover, Penn‘s first film, The Indian Runner, which he wrote, directed and produced, was presented at Cannes in 1991.
Sean Penn adapted his latest directorial effort, Into the Wild, from the non-fiction book by Jon Krakauer. Following its successful run in the United States, the award-winning film released in France today.
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.
