Hindi
Vasudev feted for contribution to growth of Asian cinema
NEW DELHI: Eminent film critic Aruna Vasudev, who recently stepped down as founder-director of the Osian’s-Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema, was felicitated for services to film criticism and the growth of Asian cinema.
In the event, organised by the Delhi Malayalee Film Society and the Habitat Film Club, the critic was paid laudable tributes by film society movement veteran N P Radhakrishnan and educator president Professor Omcherry N N Pillai.
Several award winners in the 54th National Film Awards were also felicitated on the occasion. They included Films Division chief producer Kuldip Sinha. Sinha announced that the Division had a collection of over 8,000 films in its digital archives, which could be used for research by anyone.
Though Vasudev is no longer director of the Festival, she continues as a consultant, and is also on the Board of Directors of the Osian‘s Connoisseurs of Art. She is currently a consulting editor with Wisdom Tree for its series of books on Indian cinema, of which six have already been published.
Vasudev founded the world’s first quarterly on Asian cinema, ‘Cinemaya’, in 1988 and was later one of the founders of the Network for Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC), of which she is the president.
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.
