Hindi
Poor show by new releases
Of the three new releases last Friday, Waiting happened to be the one people looked forward to thanks to Naseeruddin Shah in the lead. Alas, the box office collections did not show any appreciation in Shah and the film remained a very limited grosser barely managing to cross the Rscrore mark in its opening weekend. It collected Rs1.3 crore.
Phobia, a less publicized film blending horror with Agoraphobia, stayed poor. It managed just about Rs1.4 crore for its opening weekend.
Veerappan, an outdated story about the sandalwood mafia run by Veerappan in the jungles of Mysore, finds some footfalls at single screens. The film has collectedRs4.75 crore for its first weekend.
Fredrick passed unnoticed.
Sarbjit has not been able to make a mark with an inconclusive account of the life of an Indian in a Pakistani jail. There was not much relevance of the story for the moviegoer. The film has collected Rs19.4 crore in its first week.
Azhar has added Rs2.7 crore in its second week to take its two week total to Rs31.65 crore.
1920 London has collected Rs40 lakh in its third week to take its three week tally to Rs14.6 crore.
*Traffic has collected 20 lakh in its third week to take its three week total to 3.7 crore.
Baaghi has added Rs45 lakh in fourth week to take its four week tally to Rs78.05 crore.
The Jungle Book continues its stronghold on the box office. The film has added Rs2.7 crore in its seventh week taking its seven week tally to Rs182.65 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.
