Hindi
Actors give up fees to remake ‘Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyun Aata Hai’
MUMBAI: In this age when most actors compete amongst each other in the number game, Nandita Das, Manav Kaul and Saurabh Shukla, who play the lead roles in the remake of the cult film Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyun Aata Hai, did not charge a penny as remuneration.
The move was to support the independent film directed and produced by Soumitra Ranade that faced budget constraints.
“Firstly I don’t equate money with work. There is a lot of work that I do without charging anything. Films of course, help me pay my bills and hence I don’t do them without any fees. But seldom do you get a project or a director where you know that they genuinely don’t have the money – and they just want to make a good film,” said Das, who is known for her critically acclaimed performances.
Shukla too echoed the same thoughts as an artist. “Soumitra approached me and told me that there is no money but you be a partner. So all of us are partners in this project and I think it is great idea, because there are scripts in which the ‘mainstream market’ doesn’t believe in. But as artists we know that it has content and also has commercial possibilities. So what should we do? Should we be slaves to the market and not do these films? Or should we try it? So when we try it, we have to cut down costs,” he said.
Touched by their gesture, Ranade has made them partners on the project and will be sharing the box office profit with the three actors once the film is released.
“It was a very challenging film but I could pull it off only because of my supportive actors who worked for free,” said the director.
The film is raising Rs 30 lakhs through a two-month long crowdfunding campaign on Wishberry, with 2 October, 2015 being the last date to contribute. The campaign started on 3 August to collect money for the post-production, animation and VFX of the film.
The original film, directed by Saeed Akhtar Mirza, was released in 1980 and starred Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil and Om Puri in the lead roles.
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.
