Hindi
Madhuri Dixit and Priyanka Chopra to perform in Durban
MUMBAI: The divas of Bollywood Madhuri Dixit and Priyanka Chopra are set to perform at Saifta (the South Africa India Film and Television Awards) at Durban‘s ICC on 6 September.
Chopra is a former Miss World and one of Bollywood‘s leading ladies, while Dixit is arguably Bollywood‘s best actress and dancer.
The A-list actresses are the latest to add their names to the stellar Bollywood line-up which includes Ranveer Singh and Siddharth Malhotra, tele-stars Manish Paul, Mona Singh, Apurva Agnihotri and Shilpa Agnihotri.
Dia Mirza and film-maker Karan Johar will host the awards this year. Initially, Saif was the first choice, but he was unable to attend because of a clash of dates.
To add more spice, more than 150 prominent film and TV personalities, including actors, film producers and former model John Abraham, will be walking the Saifta red carpet, along with the who‘s who of the film and television industry from both countries.
These celebrities will get a chance to rub shoulders and interact with 30 top film and TV personalities of South Africa.
Model Jaqueline Fernandes, who wowed the audience at the Saifta launch in March, along with the unconventional rapper Hard Kaur, will be back by popular demand.
With little more than two weeks until the awards, the organisers, Celebrity Locker and the Department of Economic Development and Tourism in KZN, are billing the event as the social occasion of the year.
An audience of 6,000 fans and celebrities is expected to attend the gala Saifta extravaganza, and plenty more are expected to gather on the Durban ICC Arena Concourse to watch the Bollywood stars walk the red carpet.
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.
