Hindi
Vidhu Vinod Chopra restoring 7 films
MUMBAI: Vidhu Vinod Chopra has decided to get all his earlier seven films restored, knowing very well that older prints tend to degenerate both visibly and audibly after some point of time.
It is learnt that Chopra was hobnobbing with the idea to restore his films like Sazaye Maut, Khamosh, Parinda, 1942: A Love Story, Kareeb, Mission Kashmir and Parineeta because he feels that the films are looking visually old and the audio too doesn‘t sound half as great as a new film.
The restoration would enhance the longevity of the films. Adding to that, the sound of the films would be done on Dolby 5.1 that has multiple tracks recording for sound. Earlier, films had only monolith (one-track) sound.
“The new 5.1 sound takes the film to a completely different level,” he enthused, eager to share his experience with the restored version. “Take the scene where Jackie Shroff shoots at a chain. Previously everything was in the mono track. But now when the chain moves towards left and right, the sounds from the speakers is something else altogether,” Chopra said in a statement.
It is learnt that the process will cost Chopra about Rs 2.5 to 3 million a film. But he wants all the films restored and delivered to him latest by 27 March.
The reason: the producer-director intends to host a retrospective of 11 of his films including the Munnabhai series and 3 Idiots in April.
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.
