Hindi
Ficci to commemorate 100 years of Indian cinema at MEBC
MUMBAI: The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) will commemorate the glorious and landmark occasion of 100 years of Indian cinema and deliberate upon the crucial and critical road ahead for films, broadcast digitization and content at the fourth edition of the annual Media and Entertainment Business Conclave (MEBC).
Apart from rapidly evolving into one of the leading platforms for the sector in the country, MEBC has sessions by industry stalwarts on subjects related to the entire canvas of the media and entertainment industry.
MEBC 2012 will bring about focused sessions on Digitization for the broadcast industry, celebrate 100 years of cinema with stalwarts like Kamal Haasan, Rajnikant, Mohanlal, Dileep, Jairam, Mamoothy and other stalwarts from the Indian industry. Oscar-award winning producer of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Barrie Osborne will also grace the occasion with his presence.
The production part of films will be looked at closely in workshops and masterclasses such “A 360 degree approach to producing a global film by Barrie Osborne.
A very important discussion on Making films and managing them effectively in the digital era will be discussed by leading filmmakers such as Santosh Sivan, Priyadarshan, film maker Unnikrishnan. And to give the digital perspective to film marketing for the first time they will be joined by the Asia Pacific Director for Content Partnerships in Google, Mr Gautam Anand.
The other sessions where hand-on approach to the nitty gritties of film-making and screenwriting will be focused upon are : VFX session on Making of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Master class on post production of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 2) will be conducted by Nicolas Aithadi, Renowned VFX Supervisor from Hollywood and Digital Filmmaking workshop with RED, which focuses on removing the myth of complexity from acquisition to post when shooting with RED through hands-on demos.
Special session titled on Digital Sound Technology titled ‘Story of Sound‘ will take the attendees through the Story of advancement in audio technology and will get a chance to hear from the Dolby cinema experts on the ‘Story of Sound‘ and the evolution of cinema sound from different sound formats to the new ground breaking Dolby Atmos.
The session will have sound experts like Resul Pokutty winner of Academy awards Making of Enthiran – The Robot by Srinivas Mohan will see renowned VFX supervisor taking attendees through the journey of the making of the complex graphics and special effects of Enthiran, will also cover the basics of Computer Graphics (CG) and 3D Stereoscopic vision (S3D) along with the history and concepts of 3D stereoscopy and usage areas and how CG is used in industries like Print, Education, Electronic Media (Film, TV, Mobile) etc.
For those wanting to learn the rudiments of the craft of screenplay writing from the experts in the field, Ficci has planned a 2 -day Screen writing workshop by Dr Kamal Haasan, Singeetam Srinivasa Rao, Rohan Sippy and Saurabh Shukla and Anurag Kashyap.
For an overall understanding of the sector, there will be exhaustive presentations on the Taxation and regulatory landscapes and an overview of the current state of the sector as detailed in the FICCI Deloitte report which will be released at the conclave.
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.
