Hindi
Intl children’s film fest kicks off at Hyderabad
HYDERABAD/MUMBAI: The 17th International Children‘s Film Festival (ICFF), offering a mix of movies for the tiny tots, kicked off at Hyderabad yesterday,
Organised jointly by the Children‘s Film Society of India (CFSI) and the Andhra Pradesh government, the festival was inaugurated by the state Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy.
In his inaugural speech, Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting CM Jatua said children are the future in a country and have to be taken care of.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister M Kiran Kumar Reddy said this was the ninth ICFF in this city of the Char Minar. He said in a country which has 54 per cent below 25 years of age and 41 per cent below 18 years of age, it is important to make cinema that appeal to the young. He said the goals should be clear since children today were competing in a global village. He said films should make children think, even as they get entertained.
Reiterating that the CFSI had been allotted ten acres of land for a children film complex and promising that it would be ready by the next festival, he said Andhra Pradesh is the only state where children’s films were tax-free and a subsidy of Rs 3 million is given for makers of children’s films. This is because children’s films needed support because of competition from television and the internet.
“The festival will have special features for short films, films made by children, age-wise screening of films, workshops and an open form to deliberate on the movies,” CFSI chairperson Nandita Das said.
She said the curators have taken painstaking efforts to select the rest of the films from around the world for screening during the festival.
The festival, which will conclude on 20 November, will see the screening of 152 children‘s films from 37 countries.
Also present were CFSI Chief Executive Officer Sushovan Banerjee, and B Venkateshan of the Andhra Pradesh State Film, Television and Theatre Development Corporation. Also present were Mr Uday Kumar Varma and Mr D P Reddy, Secretary and Joint Secretary respectively in the Information and Broadcasting Ministry.
The programme, which concluded with the screening of ‘Gattu’ by Rajan Khosa, also had performances by over a hundred children, the percussion legend Sivamani who was accompanied by a child prodigy, and the award-winning Prince Dance Troupe.
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.
