Hindi
Film on Tagore’s sister-in-law wins top award at Washington S. Asian Fillmfest
NEW DELHI: Bengali film Kadambari by Suman Ghosh about Kadambari Devi, sister-in-law of Rabindranath Tagore with whom he is supposed to have had a close personal relationship and who eventually committed suicide, won the Best Film award at the Fourth Washington South Asian Film Festival.
Chaitanya Tamhane won the Best Director award for Court, a Hindi and Marathi film, which is India’s official entry for the Academy Awards.
Aparna Sen received the Special Achievement Award, while Huma Beg from Pakistan (Veils and Walls) got the Special Appreciation Award Documentary. Sarmad Khoosat received the Special Award for Contribution to Pakistan TV and Films.
The Festival of independent alternate cinema on the theme of “Art and culture transcend boundaries” had 14 features, 10 shorts and one documentary from India, Pakistan, the United States and Canada.
Rough Book by Anant Mahadevan won the best story award, while the actor awards went to Kishor Kadam (Partu) and Konkona Sen Sharma (Kadambari). Bonjour ji by Satinder Kassona was adjudged the best short film.
The audience rated Partu by Indian-American Nitin Adsul as the Best Film and Billu’s Flight by India’s Mayank Tripathi as the Best Short Film.
Indian-American entrepreneur and philanthropist Frank Islam, who inaugurated the festival said the theme of the Festival reflected a reality. “This is so even though we live in a deeply divided world. These are unsettling times-wars, refugees, terrorism, hate crimes of all types, and boundary disputes. Events such as these dominate the headlines daily,” he said.
He said marketing was a big challenge for independent films, which had to compete with extravagant, studio-backed and star-studded films from Bollywood.
In order to succeed, independent films from India must overcome this stereotype and sea of noise, Islam said.
“This year there was more awareness about the film festival here in the US and in South Asian countries,” said DCSAFF executive director Manoj Singh.
Saari Raat, Aparna Sen’s film adaptation of Bengali playwright Badal Sircar’s drama, was the opening film. There were three films from South Asian Americans: Partu, Miss India America by Ravi Kapoor and For Here or To Go by Rucha Humnabadkar.
The festival also featured two Pakistani films, Manto by actor-director Sarmad Sultan Khoosat on the life of short-story writer Sadat Hassan Manto, and Shah by actor-director on Pakistani boxer Hussain Shah who won the bronze medal at 1988 Summer Olympics.
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.
