Hindi
Vidya Balan for Melbourne to promote Indian film fest
MUMBAI: Vidya Balan, who has been named the ambassador of Indian Film Festival in Melbourne, is set to visit the city to promote the forthcoming annual festival to be held in June, according to Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu.
Baillieu said the Victorian coalition government was committed to strengthening ties between the Victorian and Indian film industries, and was pleased to be delivering the Indian Film Festival election pledge.
“The Indian Film Festival of Melbourne will showcase the extraordinary depth and diversity of the Indian film industry, and create a greater understanding and shared experiences between Victoria and India. The Indian Film Festival of Melbourne will offer diverse screenings in a variety of Indian languages, host prominent Indian filmmakers and screen professionals, and provide an interactive programme of master classes,” Baillieu said in a statement.
Louise Asher, the minister for Innovation, Services and Small Business said that having Balan as the ambassador for the inaugural festival has further enhanced Victoria‘s reputation as an international film hub.
“The Indian Film Festival of Melbourne joins our already rich roster of screen events and activities including the Melbourne International Film Festival, St Kilda Film Festival and the recently-secured Screen Producers Association of Australia annual conference,” she observed.
The festival that runs from 11 to 22 June is being organised by Mind Blowing 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.
