Hindi
Viacom18 partners with Film Heritage Foundation
MUMBAI: Viacom18 has partnered with the Film Heritage Foundation to save India’s cinematic heritage. As a step towards this cause, the Film Heritage Foundation will be setting up a week-long school from 22 – 28 February, 2015 at Films Division Mumbai.
This is for the first time that an academic initiative of this nature focused on film preservation and restoration is being conducted in India. The school will consist of lectures, presentations and practical classes on film preservation and restoration that will be conducted by international experts in the field. There will also be a daily screening of a restored classic preceded by an introductory talk on the restoration. This is in line with the vision to create an indigenous resource of film archivists and restorers that will work towards preserving India’s legacy of cinema.
With over a 100 years of cinematic heritage, India is the world’s largest producer of films. India produces more than 1700 movies a year in over 32 languages. However by 1950, the industry had lost 70-80 per cent of the films including India’s first talkie Alam Ara due to lack of proper preservation. Understanding the importance of creating awareness to safeguard India’s unique cinematic history, Viacom18 has pledged its support to the Film Heritage Foundation, mobilizing the film fraternity and industry veterans to come forward to join this initiative.
Extending support to this unique initiative, Viacom18 Media group CEO and CII National Committee on Media & Entertainment chairman Sudhanshu Vats said, “At Viacom18, we don’t just create entertainment but also believe in preserving our cultural heritage for the benefit of our audience. Our partnership with the Film Heritage Foundation is an indication of how we truly support and honour the hard work that goes behind the making of a film. Our objective for this partnership is to create awareness about the importance of preserving our glorious cinematic past because if we don’t restore films, we will lose the opportunity to document the creativity of the golden age of Indian cinema. We invite each one of you to join this movement to help restore our legacy of cinema for generations to come.”
Film Heritage Foundation founder director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur added, “Most people are not aware that India has an endangered cinematic legacy. We have lost a colossal amount of our cinematic heritage and we continue to lose more every day — even recent films dating from as late as the ’90s. We need to recognize that cinema is an integral part of our social and cultural heritage that must be preserved and restored like any other art form. The idea behind the Film Preservation & Restoration School India was to create awareness about the importance of film preservation and restoration and to take the first step in training future archivists and restorers to save our cinematic heritage. Sudhanshu Vats of Viacom 18 was the first person from the film industry who had the foresight to recognize the importance and urgency of our cause and to offer his support for this pioneering educational initiative.”
The Film Heritage Foundation has collaborated with Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation, Cineteca di Bologna, L’Immagine Ritrovata and FIAF for this course, which is certified by FIAF – the International Federation of Film Archives. Pre-registered participants from across India, Sri Lanka and Nepal will be part of this course.
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.
