Hindi
Sridevi, R Balki attend special screening for ‘Tapaal’
MUMBAI: A special screening of the award winning Marathi film Tapaal was organised recently and attended by Bollywood veterans like Sridevi, Boney Kapoor, director Imtiaz Ali, R Balki, Gauri Shinde and Niranjan Iyengar along with the cast and crew of the film.
Appreciating the movie, Sridevi commented on a micro-blogging saying, “Just watched Marathi film ‘Tapal’. After a long time, was teary-eyed & emotionally choked. A must watch film for all.”
“Laxman who also was the DoP of English Vinglish has done a commendable job in his first film as director & has packed some memorable moments in Tapal,” she added.
Produced by Maitreya Mass Media and distributed by Pickle Entertainment, starring Nandu Madhav, Veena Jamkar, Milind Gunaji, Urmila Kanetkar and introducing Rohit Utekar, ‘Tapaal’ is all set to release on 26 September 2014.
Tapaal is National & International Award winning Marathi film is set in a small village in the year 1977. It dwells with sympathy, concern and understanding on the bond between a little boy and a childless couple, and the social discrimination that they face.
Even before its release, Laxman Utekar’s directorial debut is creating the right buzz. It has been critically acclaimed and has even won various accolades & awards at different film festivals for its sterling performances.
Tapaal had its World Premiere at 18th Busan International Film Festival 2013, South Korea. It was also selected for the Indian Panorama Section at 44th IFFI (International Film festival 2013). Veena Jamkar bagged the best actress award at South Africa Film Festival. While Rohit Utekar won Best Child Actor Award, Prakash Holkar got the best lyricist award for his emotional composition ‘don disanchi sawali ‘ at the Maharashtra state film Awards.
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.
