Hindi
Preety Ali to take special workshop at Okinawa Film Commission
MUMBAI: Humara Movie co founder and wife of Imtiaz Ali Preety Ali will be taking off on 22 March for the 5th Okinawa International Film Festival, Tokyo.
The International Film Festival organized by the Okinawa Film commission is spread across seven days and includes international movie screenings, workshops, location scouting, presentations and much more.
Ali will be attending the festival along with two other representatives from the Indian film fraternity. At the festival, she will be conducting workshops on the aspects of filmmaking and elaborate the culture and functioning of the Indian film industry and the production processes in India. She will also shed light on the recent production styles applied in India, market expansion, distribution and other relevant aspects of production which is her forte. As a part of the workshop, Ali will also be conducting a location scouting to share the insights on Indian movie production.
Ali has 16 years of experience in film and TV production. She has recently ventured into Humara Movie along with her partners, Vinay Mishra and Pallavi Rohatgi to provide a platform to budding filmmakers. She handles the creative process at Humara Movie and also heads the feature film division.
In her kitty, Ali has produced big budget and independent films like Black Friday and Namaste London. She started her career with Sony Entertainment Television, and went onto work on landmark TV shows like CID. She also conceptualized programs like Surabhi on Doordarshan and Good Food Guide on Star Plus.
Ali said, "I am thrilled to be invited at the Okinawa Film Festival. It will be interesting to share perspective on how our Indian film industry works as well as understand the take on films internationally. I am looking forward to discovering locations that may catch the Bollywood industry."
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.
