Hindi
Egyptian critic Samir Farid conferred with Osian Lifetime Achievement Award
NEW DELHI: As a mark of tribute to creative thought, the 12th Osian Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema has conferred the Lifetime Achievement Award, named after the Festival’s founder Aruna Vasudev, to renowned Egyptian critic Samir Farid who is also to give a lecture at the Festival.
Accepting the award as ‘a great honour from a great country’, Farid said he loved cinema and film criticism was an expression of this. He noted that Egypt had been facing bad times, and the arts were in danger in the hands of Islamic fanatics. But he said he would continue to fight for creative freedom as religion and art were two different things.
Born in Cairo, Egypt, Farid started his career as the film Critic of “Al-Gomhoreya” daily in Cairo in 1965. He has since emerged as one of the most prolific and significant film critics in the Arab world.
Since 1967, Farid has been invited to more than 170 film festivals and seminars in Africa, Asia, USA and Europe. He has been a member of the FIPRESCI since 1971 and International Jury Boards since 1972. Farid has authored over 60 books, contributing significantly to Arab and Egyptian Cinema.
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.
