Hindi
Four film personalities align to develop quality children‘s films in India
MUMBAI: Director Onir, Paan Singh Tomar screenwriter Sanjay Chouhan, actress Tannishtha Chatterjee and noted German director Arend Agthe have decided to align to develop quality Indian children‘s cinema.
The group will mentor 18 screenplays for children‘s cinema at the Green Screen Lab 2012 being organised by Eleeanora Images Pvt Ltd (India) and Performing Arts Lab (UK) in association with Children‘s Film Society, India (CFSI), in Bhubhaneshwar in Odisha.
The 18 screenplays include five from North-East India as part of the Lab organisers‘ idea to bring out the many exciting stories from the neglected region to the mainstream India and beyond.
At least five projects are likely to be chosen for development and production funding with the target to take the films to the floor in 2013.
Acclaimed author Ruskin Bond, whose works have been adapted to the screen by directors like Shyam Benegal and Vishal Bhardwaj, will attend the Lab as a special guest, and share his thoughts on the relationship between literature and cinema with the participants.
“The call for entry to the Lab elicited a huge response and the selection jury had a tough time picking up the chosen 18 as the quality of the submissions was generally quite high. In fact, this gives us great hope about the future of children‘s cinema, which has been a neglected genre in India largely,” said Nila Madhab Panda, maker of I am Kalam.
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.
