Hindi
National awarded films of 2011 on show from 1 June
NEW DELHI: The short film ‘Red Building where the sun sets‘ in English directed by Revathy and the feature ‘Deool‘ in Marathi directed by Umesh Vinayak Kulkarni will be screened at the opening tomorrow of the public screenings of the recipients of the 59th National Film Awards for 2011.
While Revathy‘s film has won the award for family values, the Marathi film has won three awards: best film, best actor and best dialogues. Both directors will be present.
Veteran filmmaker and author Vijaya Mulay and Information and Broadcasting Ministry Joint Secretary (Films) Khurshid Ahmed Ganai will be present at the inauguration.
The screenings of the other films will be held from 2 to 10 June at Sirifort Auditorium II in the capital.
The screenings will include the showing of ‘The Dirty Picture‘, which became controversial because of its proposed telecast despite the fact that it had an ‘Adult only‘ certificate. The film will be screened on 8 June at 2 pm.
There will be three shows every day at 10.30 am, 2 pm and 5.30 pm and most screenings will be one short film followed by a feature, except in cases where the short film is of full length.
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.
