Hindi
IIFA to engage fans through social media
MUMBAI: The 15th IIFA celebrations will see the biggest and best of Indian cinema show up not only in Tampa Bay, Florida, but also on #IIFA’s assets across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube and multiple other innovative platforms in a live environment.
Millions of fans would have a chance to steal a first-look of the IIFA events and green carpets as they unfold at the Videocon d2h IIFA weekend and the Tata Motors IIFA Awards powered by LAVA mobile. The behind the scenes excitement will take centre stage and provide cinema fans voyeuristic pleasure like never before.
Powered by Lava Mobile, IIFA has lined up a host of exciting interactive social media activities, teaming up with Twitter, reinitiating the very successful Twitter Mirror experience that made its debut at the IIFAs in Macau in 2013 and introducing for the first time ever, the Twitter Vine Booth @ IIFA, Facebook and Instagram (Booth and Stop), giving online IIFAns an All-Access-Pass across the four days of the weekend.
The Twitter Mirror placed strategically at the green carpet, backstage and green rooms will bring fans candid celeb moments and selfies showcasing many a mood of their much-loved Bollywood stars tweeting with the handle @IIFA. Having proven to be a hit last year among celebrities and audiences alike, the Twitter Mirror makes a comeback and promises to be even more fun and exciting with the possibility of a photo-bomb or two.
Another green-carpet entrant in Tampa Bay will see Twitter debut its coolest photo booth yet – The Twitter Vine capturing the Bollywood brigade in a way never seen before.
IIFA will lead the pack as it did last year with the Twitter Mirror, and be the first-ever film award ceremony to witness Twitter Vine create magic, after it did the same at the American Music Awards (AMAs). The camera will circle 360 degrees around celebrities to capture a six-second video giving a full view of who wore what and spoke to who. This first-time-ever photo booth promises to arrest the best fashion moments and candid expressions straight from the carpet.
The Instagram booth is an interesting variant to keep Instagram followers engaged with the candid selfies. Instagram booth and stop will also be present at the green carpets, waiting to capture all the glamour, fashion, sudden, and dramatic moments that the carpet usually witnesses. The official Instagram handle is @IIFAAwards.
Instagram stop is another social media activity in the line-up, connecting admirers from all over the world to their desired celebrity, the 15 second Q & A platform will enable the fan to shoot questions at the star and receive replies to their query. IIFA’s Facebook page will soon launch a campaign that would collect and screen questions for celebs. Running parallel to the telecast of IIFA’s main Awards ceremony will be a tight second screen engagement via Twitter Amplify. This extremely thrilling social media activity will reveal the highlights of the event in 15 second capsules during the broadcast for online consumption. The second screen engagement will enable online consumers to watch exclusive backstage footage to complement their TV viewing experience.
As we draw closer to the weekend, IIFA gives its fans a centre seat on the front row to the craziest, star-studded weekend from 23 – 26 April.
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.
