Hindi
Is B’wood moving towards equality?
MUMBAI: It has been spoken about many times, but this year seems to attest that Bollywood is actually shunning gender-biases and is moving towards equality. That is what is evident from the movies releasing this year. Many movies of the year are giving prominence to its female actors.
While Parineeti Chopra’s character in Hasee Toh Phasee is a well-etched out role with eccentricities that makes it stand out among all the other characters in the film (even the hero Siddharth Malhotra), in this week’s release – Highway – Alia’s character has been written with similar fervor as well. In fact, Alia’s father and one of the most lauded filmmakers of the country – Mahesh Bhatt – thinks that Alia has ‘lived’ the role of her lifetime.
“Thank you Imtiaz Ali for making Alia ‘live’ the role of her life time. The women of our country will empathise with this heartfelt tale,” wrote Bhatt on Facebook.
In the months to come, Bollywood is going to spring up many such surprises where women will get a chance to not just live their lives but raise the bar too. Many movies with strong women characters and centered around women are going to make a mark at the big screen.
There’s Queen starring Kangana Ranaut that tells the story of a girl whose wedding is called off when her fiancé passes away and she, instead of crying over her situation, decides to move on. The focus of the film is on the character growing up as an individual.
Another one in the pipeline is Gulaab Gang starring Madhuri Dixit and Juhi Chawla among host of other female actors. Again a woman-centric film based around the activist group Gulaabi Gang, shows how women have started getting prominence in the film industry with diverse being written for them.
One of the other movies being looked forward to is Bobby Jasoos starring Vidya Balan in which she portrays the character of a sleuth. The film is not just being anticipated as Indian cinema’s answer to detective films but probably is also one of the first in India to be bringing in a female actor to play a sleuth.
Mary Kom’s biopic with Priyanka Chopra portraying the sportstar in the film is another addition to the list. While biopics are any way not too regular in India, one on a female sportstar is something very rare. And thus this is one movie that every movie buff is waiting for, especially after Irrfan and Farhan Akhtar have raised the bar of getting in to the skin of the real life people they portrayed in Paan Singh Tomar and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag. Priyanka is surely being watched out for in this upcoming movie.
Doesn’t it seem to be a great year for women in the film industry?
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.
