Hindi
Ashok Amritraj open to Tamil films
PANAJI: The Indian Documentary Producers Association is to help Hollywood giant Ashok Amritraj’s Hyde Park-Image Nation to find four Indian filmmakers for a special non-scripted television series featuring filmmakers in West Asia, India and Singapore.
The United Nations, Hyde Park-Image Nation, and Variety magazine had two months earlier teamed up to produce the series, ‘Chance of a Lifetime’, to be hosted by Amritraj.
The former tennis ace who is now settled in Los Angeles said: “This unprecedented effort will bring together documentary filmmakers from diverse backgrounds in a filmmaking competition where the contestants must team up to produce one cinematic vision while drawing on their varied cultural perspectives.”
Amritraj, a retrospective of whose films has been held at the IFFI, said the series will shine a spotlight on a number of United Nations global initiatives. The series will be shown to the UN Secretary General and then taken to Cannes, and later will air on an as-yet-undecided network.
The topics and tone of the films will reflect the Millennium Development Goals established at the United Nations and will include storylines that highlight issues that are central to the “Every Woman, Every Child” effort.
The winning team’s documentary will be screened at the United Nations, and they will receive a special recognition from Variety during the 2013 Festival de Cannes.
“Bringing the Middle East, India and Asia to a global audience has always been a passion of mine, and I’m thrilled to provide this platform for filmmakers of such diverse cultures to have a truly collaborative cinematic experience. The United Nations and Variety have been amazing partners on this project,” said Amritraj.
In 2009, Amritraj’s Hyde Park Entertainment and Image Nation, the Abu Dhabi production company, partnered on a $250 million financing deal to develop, produce and distribute feature films. They extended their partnership to create a strategic alliance with Singapore’s Media Development Authority. Under this deal, Hyde Park – Image Nation Singapore was launched in 2010 to fund multiple films worth an estimated production value of $75 million.
Although the entire funding will be by Amritraj’s company, the UN had made available its archival material for these short ten-minute films.
Meanwhile, Amritraj – who has made 114 films so far in Hollywood – said he had not thought of making any Indian film but was open to good content and screenplays from anywhere. In 1994, he had made the Tamil film ‘Jeans’ starring Aishwarya Rai Bachchan which was also dubbed in Hindi. He said he was open to Tamil films if he gets a good screenplay. He said he had plans of opening an office in Chennai.
He was happy that India had made huge strides in cine technology and had the latest digital equipment, as this would prevent piracy. He said the United States lost around $5 billion every year because of piracy.
Answering a question, he said India is fashionable around the world today because it was emerging as a tiger economy.
He said China was a good market for Hollywood films but Indian films are themselves so strong that there is no place for Hollywood. If India had failed to make a mark overseas, it was because Indians needed to make Indian stories that appeal to western audiences. But as ideas get non-traditional, Indian films will also make a mark in other countries. He said he thought of himself as someone who connects the world – India and Hollywood.
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.
