Hindi
Academy wants to expand relationship with India film industry
MUMBAI: Former president of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) and American Motion Picture executive and producer Sid Ganis has said that the Academy has been developing a close relationship with the Indian filmmakers.
At the 47th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) celebrated in Goa, he stated that the academy had been trying to know the Indian celebrities and filmmakers since the past few years. The academy wanted to enhance and expand its relationship with the Indian industry.
AMPAS preservationist Tessa Idlewine opined that the preference was given to Oscar-nominated films. Apart from that, movies which were unique, important and decaying were also preserved. Of the 37 films under the project, she added, 21 had been restored successfully. Idlewine also held a workshop on ‘Restoration of Satyajit Ray Preservation Project’ and said that the AMPAS was working continuously to save the artwork of the maestro and has saved his trilogy Apu, where the negatives of the films were almost burnt.
Film Festival director Senthil Rajan added that the National Film Achieves of India (NFAI) and AMPAS would have had more collaboration to preserve, conserve and restore more number of Indian films in future.
Both, Ganis and Idlewine also discussed about the 25-year old Active Preservation Program that started in 1991 and has four full-time preservationists. They also talked about the Academy vaults and the 92,000 film titles stored in them.
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.
