Hindi
Rajnikant, Wong Kar Wai to be honoured at International Film Festival of India, China is country in Focus
NEW DELHI: A total of 179 films from 75 countries across different categories would be screened and China will be the focus country for the forthcoming International Film Festival of India in Panaji, later this month.
Megastar Amitabh Bachchan will inaugurate the annual filmfest to be held from 20 to 30 November.
Popular star Rajnikant would be bestowed with the Centenary Award for Indian Film Personality of the Year, and Chinese filmmaker Wong Kar Wai would receive the Lifetime Achievement Award.
This information was given by Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Col. Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, who said the first meeting of the “Indo-China Joint Working Group” would be held on the sidelines of the festival. The Minister added that this partnership provided a platform opening new avenues for film makers from both the countries by sharing best practices and technologies.
Referring to the opening ceremony, the Minister stated Chinese film actress Zhang Ziyi, Swedish filmmaker Jan Troell, and Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Zanussi would be the Guests of Honour.
The President directed by renowned filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf from Iran will be the opening film on 20 November and The Grandmaster by Wong Kar Wai would be the closing film of the festival on 30 November.
The international films include World Cinema (61 films), Master-strokes (11 films), Festival Kaleidoscope (20 films), Soul of Asia (7 films), Documentaries (6 films), and Animated Films (6 films).
In addition, the Indian Panorama section would include 41 feature and non-feature films. The North-East being the focus region of the festival, IFFI 2014 would be showcasing seven films from that region.
Retrospectives will be held on Gulzar and Jahnu Baruah and a special tribute to Farooq Sheikh. One film each of eminent film personalities who passed away in the past year would be screened. These are Richard Attenborough, Robin Williams, Zohra Sehgal, and Suchitra Sen.
A special section of films that focus on dance, personality based retrospectives, and Masterclasses and workshops would also form part of IFFI 2014.
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.
