Hindi
National Film Archive of India to pay homage to Smita Patil
NEW DELHI: A two-day film festival to remember versatile actress Smita Patil on her sixtieth birth anniversary is being held by the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) in Pune.
‘Remembering Smita’ on 17 and 18 October will also showcase a rare poster and photo exhibition on her from the NFAI collection.
The festival will showcase eight films including her debut short film Teevra Madhyam. Other films includeBhavni Bahvai, Akaler Sandhaney, Jait Re Jait, Bazaar, Debshishu, Tarang, and Chidambaram. Out of these films, three films – Akaler Sandhaney, Jait Re Jait and Chidambaram have been restored by NFAI.
The Festival is a tribute to the multi-talented actress who died on 13 December, 1986 at the age of 31 due to childbirth complications.
The festival would be inaugurated on 17 October at 11 am by actor Amol Palekar.
A panel discussion on Patil will be held at 6 pm on 18 October with Dr Jabbar Patel, Dr Mohan Agashe and Lalita Tamhane as participants. The discussion would deliberate upon her unique style, her acting career and contribution to the film industry.
The venue for the festival is NFAI campus, Law College road, Pune.
A film, television and theatre personality regarded as one of the finest actresses of all time, Patil worked in around 80 Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam and Bengali films. She left her mark with two National film awards for best actress and Padma Shri in 1985.
Born on 17 October, 1955, Patil graduated from the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Puneand made her film debut with Shyam Benegal’s Charandas Chor (1975). Some of the other films that sheappeared in include Manthan (1977), Bhumika (1977), Aakrosh (1980), Chakra (1981), Chidambaram (1985), Mirch Masala (1985) and Namak Halaal amongst others.
The schedule of the festival is as below,
Inauguration: 17 October, 2015 at 11 am
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.
