Hindi
No big show at BO at yearend
MUMBAI: The week’s sole release, animation film Mahabharat, with many big stars lending voices to characters modelled on them, fails to attract the kids at whom it was primarily aimed.
Their trust belied by most big releases, the exhibitors finally got a happy ending to 2013 with Dhoom3. Especially single screens that were arm twisted into paying huge MGs, which not even mass appeal films could recoup, are happy with this one, the fastest money spinner in Hindi film history with no fudging of figures by either the stars concerned or the production house. This one is headed to becoming the real, rare 200+ crore film at the domestic box office before it ends its second weekend. The film, which just about crossed 100 crore, in its opening weekend, maintained a strong hold on the box office to take the count to 180 crore for its Hindi version alone while totting up 189 crore with Tamil and Telugu dubbed version.
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The Dhoom3 mania seems to have washed out the other runners as their collections have dropped to symbolic. R…. Rajkumar has dropped down to 55 lakh in its third week taking its three week total to 59.05 crore.
Goliyon Ki Rasleela: Ram-Leela has collected 20 lakh in its sixth week taking its six week tally to 105.45 crore.
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.
