Hindi
Film on Sunil-Nargis love story to be screened at Belize Filmfest
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NEW DELHI: A film based on the book Together Forever by renowned America-based Indian filmmaker Mickey Nivelli and produced and directed by Nitin S Adsul is to be screened on the closing day of the Eighth Belize International Film Festival being held from 11 to 14 July.
Nivelli, who had commenced his career as an assistant with the late producer-director-actor Sunil Dutt was inspired by the true love between Dutt and actress Nargis who had later died of cancer, and its similarities to other events that happened in his life.
Mickey Harbance Kumar had left India and begun a film career in the Caribbean Islands, but later moved to New York. Here he met an ageing lady Lotte Nivelli, a Jew who had escaped Hitler‘s atrocities in Germany where she lost her husband and son to make a new life for herself in America. Mickey thereafter changed his name to Mickey Nivelli.
Inspired by the similarities of the love stories of Lotte and Felix and Dutt and Nargis, he wrote a book attempting to show that pure soul mates do meet in heaven.
The 42-minute film by Adsul is only a teaser to a full-length feature planned on the subject.
The story is about a seminar organised in New York to discuss the love Sunil Dutt had for his wife Nargi. The debate elaborates on how their love story gets intertwined with that of a German born couple, Lotte and Felix Joseph who were victims of Hitler‘s Nazism. India‘s movie star Sita Devi is ruthlessly dumped by her lover Kumar because he has fallen in love with someone else. She is devastated and goes to the US to attend the seminar. This story reflects the aspirations and dreams of lovers belonging to all religions, race, or color.
Mickey‘s films include Rainbow Rani, Girl from India, Heaven becomes Hell, Caribbean Fox and The Right and the Wrong.
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.
