Hindi
Single screens save R…Rajkumar’s face
Mumbai: The latest film to come from the Prabhu Deva stable R…. Rajkumar was thrashed by the film critics. Following the trend, the film met with firewall at multiplexes with its crude approach and poor content. However, single screens proved face saving for the film in hinterlands, especially in the Hindi belt in the opening weekend as it managed to garner figures of Rs 26.6 crore.
The poor run continued as another film launched on 6 December, Club 60, a delightful film about lonely senior citizens who find shelter in a club and in each other’s company, had a very weak opening as expected.
 |
Even the Nawab Saif Ali Khan wouldn’t save Bullet Raja. The film had an unimpressive run following poor public reports. The film managed to add a little over 10 crore in four days to its opening weekend of Rs 19.7 and ending its first week with Rs 29.75 crore.
Singh Saab The Great collected Rs 6.1 crore in its second week taking its two week total to 26.9 crore while Gori Tere Pyar Mein continued its poor run in its second week by adding just 3.75 crore to its first week figures and taking its two week total to 25.85 crore.
The only two silver linings for the film industry have been Galiyon Ki Rasleela: Ram-Leela which joined the 100 crore club as it held on well in its third week by collecting 8.5 crore. This takes the film’s three week total to 100.3 crore of which half came from Bombay Circuit.
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.
