Hindi
Tamil filmmaker takes YRF to court
MUMBAI: Peeved by the similarities between his film Naan Avanillai and Yash Raj Films‘ latest film Ladies vs Ricky Bahl, Tamil director Selva has dragged the producers to Court.
Claiming that the YRF film is a carbon copy of his film, Selva has accused the makers of lifting the Tamil story without taking rights nor giving credits to the original makers.
While Naan Avan Illai had Sneha, Malavika, Namitha, Keerthi Chawla and Jyothirmayi as heroines, its sequel had Lakshmi Rai, Hemamalini, Swetha Menon and Sangeetha as the con-man‘s ladies.
Besides dragging YRF to Court, Selva has also approached the Director‘s Association over the issue.
“I remade K Balachander‘s classic Naan Avan Illai (1974) by the same name in 2007. Without obtaining permission from us, Maneesh Sharma has made Ladies vs Ricky Bahl which has 75 per cent of the scenes from both the films,” averred Selva.
The filmmaker said that he is shocked by this development, as Ladies vs Ricky Bahl was made by Yash Raj Films.
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.
