Hindi
Delhi can be a gateway to north India for filmmaking: Dr Kiran Walia
NEW DELHI: Delhi has the potential of becoming the film city for north and north-east India.
Delhi Women and Child Development and Languages Minister Dr Kiran Walia said the Delhi government had already worked to make Delhi the cultural hub of the country and would be eager to help in turning the city into a film hub if concrete suggestions were made by anyone.
Inaugurating a two-day meet on ‘Is India’s next film city?‘ as part of the 12th Osian’s Cinefan Festival for Asian and Arab Cinema, she said Delhi can become a film production centre as a gateway to north and north-east India.
She said that things could be worked out if any party came forward for this purpose, adding that Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit had asked her to convey this sentiment.
Delhi Tourism is also close to working out a policy whereby it will facilitate film shooting in the national capital territory region. Delhi Tourism and Transport Development Corporation Managing Director G G Saxena said a booklet would be issued soon about the facilities that can be offered to filmmakers.
Earlier, Osian’s chairman Neville Tuli announced that his group was setting up a museum which will house material relating to the arts, Osianama, in Delhi as its contribution towards helping Delhi grow as a major hub of cultural activities. He said cinema can play a complimentary role in this endeavour.
He said it was unfortunate that filmmakers never left the infrastructures they built for their films for others to use, otherwise Delhi would have had enough infrastructure by now.
He was categorical that it was wrong to depend on the government for everything as it had no role in a private endeavour. Even monuments where filmmakers decide to shoot their films should be given on payment.
Delhi can embrace cinema in a more systematic way, and there has to be a ‘jugalbandi’ (collaboration) between the government and the private sector.
Bobby Bedi said it was unfortunate that cinema’s role had never been seen as culture. He said this country is held together by cricket and cinema, apart from language – English or Hindi. Thus cinema plays a major national role.
There is, therefore, a strong case for establishing cinema in north India as a gateway to the north and the north-east.
He said it was a cakewalk to shoot films in Delhi as compared to Mumbai, and so it was for the Information and Broadcasting Ministry to approve this. And there were ample places available in the NCR outside the main city for developing a film city.
However, eminent filmmaker Shekhar Kapur did not feel that Delhi could be a film hub because all the decision makers were in Mumbai and all the talent moved out of Delhi to Mumbai. He said that there was need to open more institutions to train people in filmmaking if Delhi was to become a hub, adding that he regretted that the talent from the National School of Drama did not stay in the capital. He also said that most of the decision makers – the producers – were in Mumbai.
Creative people needed creative environments and could not flourish in a bureaucratic city.
Sudhir Tandon of Osian’s who is coordinating the two-day meet said the aim of Osian’s was to start a debate on the subject.
Meanwhile, the Government is close to drawing up a plan for single-window clearance system for those wanting to shoot in the country.
Eminent filmmaker Bobby Bedi said the Information and Broadcasting Ministry had been working on this for several months and was very close to finalising the details of the policy.
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.
