Hindi
National film awards to be held on 3 May every year to commemorate ‘Raja Harishchandra’
NEW DELHI: The National Film Awards would be presented on 3 May every year since it was on that day in 1913 that the country‘s first indigenous feature film ‘Raja Harishchandra‘ by DG Phalke was released.
According to Information and Broadcasting Ministry sources, there would be a special tableau on Indian cinema at the Republic Day parade on 26 January next year to mark one hundred years of cinema. The government would appreciate if some film personalities took part in this tableau.
The Ministry has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Tourism Ministry to promote India as a film tourism destination and these two ministries will work with the Home and Culture Ministries towards creating a single window clearance for those wanting to shoot films in various parts of the country.
Cinema is a cultural artifact and therefore has to be preserved. The country had made around 40,000 feature films till 2010 but many had been lost to posterity. The National Film Heritage Mission had been given a sum of Rs 50 billion to help restore and preserve these films and at least 2,500 films were being restored in the first phase.
While video and internet piracy is a major issue, the main need is to create public awareness about this in a multimedia campaign in which the industry must also take part. Plans had been drawn up in the 12th Plan towards this, and sensitisation of police officers would be the first step in this direction.
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.
