Hindi
Indian film fest in Abu Dhabi from 19 April
MUMBAI: The newly formed Indian Film Society of the UAE (IFSUAE) in association with the Embassy of India (Cultural Wing) would hold a three-day film festival in Abu Dhabi from 19 to 21 April. The event will introduce the public to the film society and its activities.
The three-day festival will also include seminars, lectures and dialogue with filmmakers. Through this festival, IFSUAE intends to facilitate education in the public in the knowledge, understanding and enjoyment of the art of Indian classic and contemporary films.
Films such as Elippathayam, Kanasemba Kudureyaneri, Moner Manush and Umbartha‘ will be screened during the festival, which will also screen Arabic and Indian short films from UAE filmmakers and those made by Indian expatriate filmmakers. The directors of each of the four feature films being shown are scheduled to lead a seminar and discussion on April 20.
The festival will be inaugurated by India‘‘s Ambassador to the UAE M K Lokesh. It will be attended by well-known film personalities including Adoor Gopalkrishnan, Girish Kasaravalli, Jabbar Patel and Goutam Ghose.
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.
