Hindi
Annapurna Studios invests Rs 1 bn in 5 film studios
MUMBAI: In its hope to target Hollywood with cheaper labour and studio rentals in India, Annapurna Studios has added five state-of-the-art studios with an investment of Rs 1 billion.
Situated in an area measuring 10,00,000 square feet, this is one of Asia‘s most modern studios, offering concept-to-can facility.
Annapurna Studios managing director and popular Telugu actor Akkineni Nagarjuna said that the air conditioned studios with integrated facilities were on par with international standards. “We hope to attract Hollywood. We are already getting some inquiries,” he averred.
He said that Annapurna Studios would first target Bollywood, adding that very few studios in Mumbai had the kind of facilities which his studio offers.
Annapurna Studios, founded by his father and legendary actor Akkineni Nageswara Rao three decades ago, will throw open the new facility in a week. Nagarjuna expects a turnover of between Rs. 45 to
Rs. 50 crore by the end of 2013 from the new facility.
Last year, the studio opened a film and media school that has so far trained 100 students in different fields of film, television and media.
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.
