Hindi
NRI made Hindi film wins award in Filmfest in Texas
NEW DELHI: Once Again (Phir Vehi), a Hindi film by award winning non-resident Indianfilmmaker Sanjay Arora, has won the third prize at the 6th Boomtown Film and Music Festival 2013 in Texas.
Filmed in Delhi, this 50-minute family drama is inspired by the teachings of Buddha. It revolves around Raj Malhotra, a self-centered company executive, who uses situations and people around him to his advantage but life takes an unexpected turn forcing him to accept reality that paves way to a journey of transformation.
The film, which was first screened at the Delhi International Film Festival last year, has also been nominated for the Best South East Asian Film and Best Director at the World Music and Independent Film Festival 2013 to take place in August in Washington D.C. It had also been nominated for the Best Screenplay at the Hot Media International Film Festival 2012.
Arora told indiantelevision.com that the film ‘reflects universal feelings that may leave us evaluating our own lives. It takes this journey to depict the reality and the process of transformation that will impact many lives positively‘.
Delhi born Arora left a successful career as a software engineer in the US to follow his dream of becoming a filmmaker. He joined New York Film Academy. His filmography includes the award winning films Butterfly Wings, Expression and Chase.
Butterfly Wings was screened in the US, Canada, and the Philippines including an invitational special screening held at the UN in Delhi and also won the Best Film award at the Global Film Festival 2011. It was screened at the WeCare Film Festival on Disability Issues in Delhi.
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.
