Hindi
No takers for films sans merit or promotion
MUMBAI: The drought continues despite a number of new films releasing. The thing is, the films released in last three weeks lacked in face value and promotion. Cinema halls continued with their suicidal approach of sticking to the high admission rates. It does not impact the merit and face value of a film.
What is happening is that, films have been opening but there are no takers.
Agreed, a lot of these films have no selling point. But, the worst sufferer was Raabta, a T Series presentation, which was a well promoted film and had a rather high price tag. Sadly, there was no audience at some venue even for its opening show. The film being mediocre or bad comes later when people have seen it and go away with a bad opinion about it.
Last week saw three more releases in Bank Chor, Phullu, G Kutta Se. While, Phullu, a film on social awareness about women’s issue and, Ge Kutta Se, a gory film about honour killing, were not expected to work commercially, Bank Chor carried some promise, having been released by Yash Raj Films’ alternate banner, Y Films. The problem was, the film had hit the cinema halls out of the blue. It was not afforded even the symbolic promotion to create awareness. Probably because, Y Films was only releasing the film and was not its producer. The outcome has proved to be disastrous.
*Bank Chor, an attempted comedy fell flat lacking in comedy, face value and promotion. The film had a poor opening with Rs 1.44 crore on day one, could not add much on Saturday collecting Rs 1.66 crore but registered a drop on Sunday with TV channels offering live Badminton, hockey and cricket tournaments where in all three events Indian teams had a lot at stake. The film collected Rs 4.34 crore for its opening weekend.
*G Kutta Se, a film on honour killing and Phullu, a film about woman’s problem remain also ran.
*Raabta, a T Series and Dinesh Vijan joint venture, has a poor first week despite good pre-release promotion. Counting on just three characters to carry a poorly written film through, it managed to collect Rs 20.5 crore in its first week.
*Behen Hogi Teri ended its first week with Rs 2.05 crore.
*Sachin: A Billion Dreams just about comes to the end of its run as the film adds a mere Rs 1.05 crore in its third week taking its three week tally to Rs 40.9 crore.
*Hindi Medium continues to hold its own against all odds to add Rs 5.8 crore in its fourth week to take its four week total to Rs 0.6 billion.
*Baahubali: The Conclusion (Dubbed) has collected about Rs 2.4 crore in its seventh week taking its seven week total to Rs 4.992.
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.
