Hindi
MAMI gets going with Sridevi lighting inaugural lamp
MUMBAI: Amid much fanfare, the 14th Mumbai Film Festival, presented by Reliance Entertainment and American Express got off to a grand opening with Sridevi lighting the inaugural lamp along with veteran film maker Shyam Benegal, chairman and trustees of Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI).
The opening function also saw the introduction and felicitation of the jury members of international competition India Gold 2012, Celebrate Age and Dimensions Mumbai. “We look forward to another year of bringing superlative global cinema to our patrons and promoting budding talent at the festival,” commented festival director Srinivasan Narayanan.
The function continued with Anil Kapoor calling on stage Anupam Kher, whose critically acclaimed comedy-drama Silver Linings Playbook kick-started the 8-day long festival. The film is directed by David O Russell and stars Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro. Speaking on the occasion Kher said, “I have always endeavoured to make films with passion and I am glad to have been provided with an opportunity to work with such amazing co-actors.”
Chief initiator of the festival, Tina Ambani conferred director, producer, writer and actor from the People‘s Republic of China Zhang Yimou the Lifetime Achievement Award for Foreign Film Personalities. “The 14th Mumbai Festival is an initiative truly close to my heart and a very special connection to my cinematic roots,” she observed.
The opening day function‘s red carpet and movie screening witnessed a host of film artistes, filmmakers, renowned litterateurs and cine-philes including Jaya Bachchan, Manisha Koirala, Leander Paes, Shobhaa and Dilip De, Ila Arun, Kirron Kher, Rahul Bose, Ranvir Shorey, Milind Soman, Shahana Goswami, R. Balki with wife and filmmaker Gauri Shinde, Pritish Nandy, Sridhar Raghavan, Sanjay and Ambika Suri,Dibakar Banerjee and Hansal Mehta among others.
All in all, the first day of the 14th Mumbai Film Festival set pace for the week-long cinematic extravaganza that promises to feature the finest works of cinematic genius from a lineup of over 200 films.
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.
