Hindi
9 Eleven to close People’s Film Festival in New York
NEW DELHI: ‘9 Eleven‘ by America-based Indian Manan Singh Katohora, which recently received the Rising Star award at the Canada International Film Festival, is to be the closing film at the Peoples Film Festival (TPFF) from 16 to 19 May in New York.
‘9 Eleven‘ portrays the life of 11 people who belong to different walks of life. Though each individual has achieved a measure of success in his or her individual life, the darkest secrets come out in the open when all of them are given some time for introspection, when they meet each other in a bizarre twist of events.
They realise that their lives are inter-woven and this literally shakes up their peaceful lives. Terrorised to the core by an unknown entity in an unfamiliar place, each individual is petrified and is hesitant to talk or take each other into confidence for one simple reason: The Fear of the Unknown.
The Peoples Film Festival (TPFF) is a showcase of extraordinary films that use various different media formats to produce quality films. TPFF celebrates the power of the media when placed in the hands of the people. TPFF cares about films whether they are protests or powerful clips shot in the most extreme conditions. Their objective is to level the playing field while giving the everyday videographer and independent producer the same opportunities to debut their work on the big screen. The main focus is on content, the apparatus used, the technology and delivery.
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.
