Hindi
Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan to inaugurate 18th Kolkata Film Festival
MUMBAI: Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh will inaugurate the 18th Kolkata Film Festival (KKF) on 10 November.
The festival will screen as many as 189 films from 60 countries. Iranian film Nader and Simin: A separation, directed by Azgarh Faradi, will be the opening film of the eight-day festival ending 17 November.
During the festival, tributes would be paid to ex-superstar Rajesh Khanna who died earlier this year. On the occasion, Anand, the evergreen film of the star, would be screened.
Bengali film star Koel Mullick will be the thali girl for the second consecutive year at the inaugural ceremony, said her father and KFF chairperson actor Ranjit Mullick.
“The festival has a budget of Rs 30 million,” said state information and culture secretary Nandini Chakraborty. However, she remained a mere spectator when asked about the contribution of the state government and the sponsors.
Centenary tributes would be paid to Italian movie director Michelangelo Antonioni, 13 of whose creations – five features and eight documentaries – would be showcased at the festival, the country‘s second oldest.
It is the second time that the regime of West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee is organising the film fest.
Like last year, the festival will kick off with a gala inaugural ceremony at the Netaji Indoor Stadium.
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.
