Hindi
Filmfare to present 2500th ‘Black Lady’ in 2012
NEW DELHI: The 2500th award will be given away at the 2012 annual Filmfare awards ceremony, which is the first private sector film award instituted in the country in the fifties.
Terming the 57th Idea Filmfare Awards 2011 for this reason, Worldwide Media CEO Tarun Rai said Filmfare was not fazed by the large number of other awards since ‘the Black Lady has had a head-start of fifty years‘.
The awards are selected by a two-way process: the readers send in their votes, and the jury then shortlists the award-winners from the films nominated on the basis of the votes received. However, this does not apply to the Critics Awards which are picked by a jury.
He said the next ceremony would be on 29 January 2012 at Film City in Mumbai, thus giving readers adequate time to react over the releases of 2011.
Aditya Birla Group chief corporate affairs officer Rajat Mukarji said that Idea Cellular would be sponsoring the awards for the fourth time in a row.
Imran Khan, who presented the show along with Ranbir Kapoor in the last award ceremony, said that they ensured that no film personality was hurt or offended by their presentation. He admitted that taking on the show after Shah Rukh Khan and Saif Ali Khan had done it for two years prior to their coming in had made it a daunting task. It was particularly ‘scary‘ for him the first time since it was just six months after his debut. Imran is in Delhi to learn Haryanvi and do rehearsals for a new film he will be doing shortly. Speaking for himself, he said audience appreciation mattered more to him than awards.
Mukarji added, “This year of Idea Filmfare Awards is special as it also celebrates the centenary year of Indian cinema and coincides with Idea crossing the 100 million subscriber mark. With Idea‘s 3G services, our over 100 million subscribers will now get an opportunity to experience the best mobile experience across various platforms. Idea will also enable its subscribers to access movie content and results of the Idea Filmfare Awards on their mobile phones.”
Coincidentally, the Indian film industry is entering its 100th year in 2012. Filmfare was founded in 1952.
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.
