Hindi
Mukesh Bhatt re-elected as Guild president
NEW DELHI: Eminent filmmaker Mukesh Bhatt has been unanimously re-elected as president of the Film and Television Producers Guild of India., while Dheeraj Kumar, Siddharth Roy Kapur, Manish Goswami and Vijay Singh have been named vice presidents.
At the first meeting of its newly constituted Guild Council of Management, which was held immediately after the 61st Annual General Meeting in Mumbai, the other office bearers re-elected as part of the Guild Management Team are Ashim Samanta and Srishti Arya as treasurers.
Kulmeet Makkar will continue to manage the affairs of the Guild as its CEO.
In his opening speech, Bhatt said, “Throughout the past three years, our management team has embarked on the path of my illustrious predecessors and worked with dedication, determination and intensity on embellishing and brightening the image and reputation of the Guild.”
He said Makkar had reinvigorated and revitalised the approach and modus operandi of the Guild. “We continue to engage with State and Central Governments over several issues concerning the film and television industry. There have been many fresh initiatives undertaken by Guild such as waiver of all the charges pertaining to Publicity clearance and Titles registration to make the system more transparent and provide enhanced value to the members, release of first edition of the Film incentive Guide which provides processes and incentives in detail to benefit Indian producers for shooting in 12 countries apart from other reports such as Make in Maharashtra, Film tourism, GST way forward,” Bhatt added.
The other members of the newly elected Council of Management of Guild are Ramesh Sippy, Manmohan Shetty, Ashutosh Gowariker, Rakesh Roshan, Karan Johar, Farhan Akhtar, Ekta Kapoor, Vishal Bhardwaj, Sushilkumar Agrawal, Ratan Jain, N P Singh, Madhu Mantena, Hiren Gada, Sabbas Joseph, Kiran Shantaram, Randhir Kapoor, Amit Khanna, Kamalkumar Barjatya (member emeritus) and Rajkumar Kohli (co-opted member).
In addition to these, Subhash Ghai, Ritesh Sidhwani and Guneet Monga along with eight more Guild members and representatives namely Prem Sagar, Asitkumarr Modi, Sneha Rajani, Ajit Andhare, Sameer Nair, Apoorva Mehta, Aashish Singh and Vipul D. Shah were nominated as special invitees.
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.
