Hindi
Srivastava is Entertainment Society of Goa CEO
NEW DELHI: Manoj Srivastava, who until recently was deputy director in the Directorate of Film Festivals, has taken over as the chief executive officer of the Entertainment Society of Goa (ESG).
ESG is a state government body that has been set up to coordinate with the centre for the organisation of the International film festivals of India.
He succeeds Nandini Paliwal, an Indian administrative service officer from the Union Territory cadre, who was posted to the north east after the conclusion of IFFI 2007 in December 2007. The post had been vacant for more than four months.
A professional filmmaker, trained at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, Srivastava worked with Doordarshan as a producer for 15 years before joining the Directorate eight years ago.
As a filmmaker, his film Hum Panchhi Ek Dal Ke participated in Cannes Film Festival this year. It is being screened next week in Kabul in a special exposition and has also been selected for the Brisbane International Film festival early next month. His next film project is the Journey Of The Brahmputra, which he plans to shoot in China, India and Bangladesh.
As a producer with Doordarshan, he handled shows like Zubin Mehta concerts, and live telecasts from Parliament, apart from high profile programmes like The Big Question with Karan Thapar. He directed 26 episodes of the programme, apart from shows like Mirror of the World. He also covered the Kargil war with DD News.
As a film critic, he has written on cinema and television for publications and websites, which includes editing of two Indian Panorama and two National Film Award books. His book on the history of Indian Cinema titled ‘Wide Angle’ is being published soon by Penguin India, and a novel ‘Evil Within’ is ready for publishing.
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.
