Hindi
New York Film Academy to launch India outfit in 2012
New Delhi: The New York Film Academy, along with the AMR Group, is set to launch its first branch in India in 2012 with its first campus being set in Greater Noida.
The Academy has shown keen interest to have Bollywood celebrities as guest lecturers. Said New York Film Academy president marketing and business development Kitty Koo, “Just like we invite guests from Hollywood, we would definitely like to invite guest lecturers from Bollywood because it’s quite inspiring for the students. We approached some of the Bollywood actors, but unfortunately their philosophy is all about money. We follow a philosophy which is giving back and sharing with students. Hollywood celebrities enjoy teaching, they want to share what they have. The fee that Bollywood celebs asked was shocking. “
The Academy boasts of guest lecturers like filmmaker Steven Speilberg and Kevin Spacey. The Academy hopes to fly them down to India for a lecture at their campus here.
“We have different guest lecturers in our campuses like Speilberg and Spacey and hopefully when the Delhi school is launched we would happily arrange for their visit based on their itinerary because sometimes they are not easy to get,” Koo added.
The New York Film Academy started in 1992 in Robert DeNiro`s Tribecca Film Center and started offering innovative curriculum and intensive hands on filmmaking programsme. Later it expanded to Manhattan, Soho, and Los Angeles. It also has its campuses in Abu Dhabi, Brisbane and New South Wales.
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.
