Hindi
Prayag Film City in Midnapore gets SRK’s endorsement
MUMBAI: Prayag Group, with diverse interests in infrastructure, hospitality and film production, has announced the launch of its dream venture named Prayag Film City. This film making studio has been endorsed by Shah Rukh Khan.
Prayag Film City will be a mega-sized integrated film city complex and a one-stop entertainment destination to be opened to the public in two phases at Chandrakona, West Midnapore, 165 km from Kolkata.
Designed by eminent art director Nitish Roy, the opening of the phase I of the flm city is slated for 15 April, a day after the Bengali new year on 14 April.
Said Prayag Group managing director Avik Bagchi, “The Indian Film Industry which is regarded as one of the largest of its kind in the world is poised for more growth, it is eminent that significant infrastructural overhaul is the need of the hour to sustain rapid development of the industry. This mega project comes up just at this juncture when the entire film industry looks up to better facilities, comfort and convenience in order to create and showcase more quality products worldwide.”
Averred Shah Rukh Khan, “I belong to the industry and projects like this build its future; so I’m very happy to be the ambassador for Prayag Film City.”
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.
