Hindi
Indian Short films making news in festivals overseas
New Delhi: Even as feature films from India continue to make waves overseas, short films from the country are also getting major recognition internationally.
Six short films from the Satyajit Ray Foundation‘s annual short film competition 2012 including some by Indians overseas are to be screened at the 18th annual Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival in Bristol from 18 to 23 September.
The films are: Ayesh by Farzana Tipurita, UK; Raju by Max Zarhle, Germany; Khaleel Khan ke Faakhtey (Dirty Doves) by Rizwan Siddiqui, India; Maya by Naina Panemanglor, UK; Shor (Noise) by Neeraj Ghaywan, India; and Unravel by Meghna Gupta, UK.
Meanwhile, India will be the guest of honour with a special focus at the 35th Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival to be held from 1 to 9 February next year.
Jacques Curtil from the festival team is presently touring Kolkata, Chennai and Pune to view films and establish further contacts for the preparation of the Indian retrospective programs at the festival.
The winning short films from Clermont-Ferrand are being screened in the three cities in September.
The Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival – one of the most important short film festivals in the world – is the second largest film festival in France.
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.
