Hindi
Filmmakers observe 91st birth anniversary of Satyajit Ray
MUMBAI: Filmmakers the world over are observing the 91st birthday of noted filmmaker and India’s first Oscar winner Satyajit Ray today.
Having started his career as a graphic artist before heading to London to realise his passion for filmmaking, Ray went on to make timeless classics like Apu Triology, Jalsaghar, Sonar Kella, Charulata, and Shatranj Ke Khiladi.
His path-breaking films with strong subject, poetic storytelling and innovative filmmaking style has been a benchmark for filmmakers and it is called as Ray‘s school of films.
Son of poet and author Sukumar Ray and grandson of legendary writer Upendrakishore Roychowdhury, Ray graduated from the Presidency College of Kolkata and enrolled himself into the Vishva-Bharati University
founded by Rabindranath Tagore and trained under such masters as Nandalal Bose and Benod Behari Mukherjee.
Ray is the only Indian filmmaker to have received the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1992, but being gravely ill then, could not collect the Oscar in person and sent in a recorded message instead.
He passed away on 23 April 1992.
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.
