Hindi
Gangs of Wasseypur premieres at London fest
MUMBAI: The London Indian Film Festival opened recently with the UK-premiere of Anurag Kashyap‘s Gangs of Wasseypur.
“The London Indian Film Festival is lucky for me. My Dev D played in year one followed by the premiere of That Girl In Yellow Boots in year two and got UK distribution and now I‘ve opened the festival. It‘s a great platform,” observed Kashyap.
Besides Kashyap, others prominent at the red carpet included actress Tannishtha Chatterjee and Ferena Wazeir. The celebrity wave continued with acclaimed British Asian actors Riz Ahmed (Trishna), Upen Patel (Namastey London) and Shiv Jhala (whose ‘Arjun and Alison‘ will enjoy its World Premiere at the festival on 30 June), walking the red carpet and obliging screaming fans with photo opportunities.
“We are delighted that this year‘s London Indian Film Festival has opened to such a tremendous response. We have a diverse range of events scheduled for the next two weeks, including the brilliant collaboration of director Q‘s Gandu Circus along with Susheela Raman and many World and UK film premieres,” observed Festival Director Cary Sawhney.
Anushka Sharma, currently filming in London for Yash Chopra‘s next opposite Shah Rukh Khan, also attended the premiere. After the screening, Sharma promptly remarked, “ I enjoyed Gangs of Wasseypur enormously and am looking forward to working with Kashyap in Bombay Velvet.”
Also present were directors Asif Kapadia , Michael Winterbottom, Sidharth Sharma, Devanand Shanmugam and Sarovar Banka.
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.
