Hindi
Indian filmmaker on international jury of CICFF
Vinod Ganatra, an independent award winning film maker from Mumbai, is a member of the international jury of the 12th China International Children’s Film Festival to be held from 9-15 September in Siping City, Jilin Province.
The China International Children’s Film Festival (CICFF) is an international biennial film festival held at different parts of China. The festival provides Chinese children an opportunity to learn about the world and helps global children’s film professionals know about China. The Festival aims to enhance the international communication and cooperation for children’s films, and promote the worldwide development of children’s films.
Vinod Ganatra, a recipient of The Liv Ullmann Peace Prize, Chicago, has been active in the Film and Television Production from 1982. He has edited and directed about 400 Documentaries & News Reels. He has Produced 25 TV Programmes for Children & Youth. He has also made three Films for Children’s Film Society, India, and these films have won 23 International Awards.
He is also a recipient of the Dada Saheb Phalke Lifetime Achievement Award conferred by The Association of Film And Video Editors. He has several National & International Awards to his credit. Widely travelled, he has also served as Jury at several National and International Film Festivals world over for last two decades.
His debut feature film Heda Hoda (Blind Camel) travelled to about 58 International Film Festivals world over and won many Awards. His next film Lukka Chhuppi (Hide-n-Seek) was listed in the LIMCA Book of World Records as ‘the First Children’s Feature Film fully shot at the highest altitude’ at Ladakh in the Himalayas. It was also screened at about 21 International Film Festivals.
Harun-Arun, his next film in Gujarati, based on the Indo-Pak border was world premiered at the 26th Chicago International Children’s Film Festival and conferred with the prestigious ‘Liv Ullmann Peace Prize’. He also won the ‘Best Juvenile Audience Award at Dhaka International Film Festival in January 2010. This was followed by yet another Goal of Transmedia Critics Jury Award in March 2010. In June he received the ‘Light of Asia Award at Sri Lanka.
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.
