Hindi
Rajnikant and Kamal Haasan resolve their films’ release dates
MUMBAI: Rivals for decades, Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan recently came together to steer clear of each other in Chennai and Mumbai. They sorted out talks of an impending clash between the former‘s Kochadaiyaan and the latter‘s Vishwaroopam that were to release post-Diwali.
Apparently, at the meeting behind closed doors, Kamal Haasan decided to advance the release of Vishwaroopam, so that there could be a clear gap of two months between the two releases. Accordingly, the Kamal Haasan film will be seen on the big screen before that of Rajinikanth.
While Rajinikant‘s film is still in the post-production stage, Kamal Hassan‘s film is almost ready. Vishwaroopam will release in October while the tentative release for Kochadaiyyan has been fixed for either December or January.
“We‘ve made a pact not to clash. It would do no good to either of us to release films together. It‘s because of economics that Rajini and I have not come together since our mentor K Balachander‘s Ninaithale Inikkum in 1979. No filmmaker can afford to cast us together, except me,” Kamal Haasan has said.
Interestingly, Ninaithale Inikkum, that has both the veterans, is being re-released as a technically enhanced digital-dolby experience.
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.
