Hindi
Barfi! collects Rs 346 mn in opening weekend
Mumbai: The cautious limited screen release strategy with concentration on multiplexes for Barfi! has helped get good dividends for UTV. Despite mixed reports from viewers, the film has collected as much as Rs 346 million in its opening weekend.
However, the limited confidence in the film has created a dilemma for the company, which has another film, Heroine, lined up for release next Friday, 21 September. If Barfi! continues to do well at the multiplexes, as the exhibitors think it will, it would not be wise to discontinue the film for the sake of Heroine.
The exhibitors are advocating one or two shows per screen to Heroine and let the already proven Barfi! enjoy prime time shows. UTV could have planned the release of Heroine for 28th September which would have allowed a two week gap between the films and also helped skip the Ganeshostav week which does affect collections in parts of India.
The other two releases of the week, Jeena Hai Toh Thok Daal and Qayamat Hi Qayamat, failed to make any mark at the box office.
Raaz3, which took an excellent opening, ended its first week with a rewarding Rs 552.5 million. The second weekend is reasonably good as the film added another Rs 90.5 million taking its 10-day tally to Rs 643 million.
Joker collected Rs 16 million in its second week to take its total collection to Rs 207 million. Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi collected Rs 6 million in its third week taking its total collection to Rs 120 million.
Ek Tha Tiger continued to brave all fresh releases and managed to sustain at the box office. It added Rs 35.5 million for the fourth week. With this, the film‘s 30-day collection totalled Rs 1.98 billion.
Gangs Of Wasseypur II collected Rs 1.1 million in its fifth week to take its total collection to Rs 231.1 million.
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.
