Hindi
Mukesh Bhatt re-elected as President of Guild at 60th Annual General Meeting
MUMBAI: Shri Mukesh Bhatt was unanimously re-elected as President of The Film & Television Producers Guild of India Ltd. (“Guild”) at the first meeting of its newly constituted Guild Council of Management which was held immediately after the 60th Annual General Meeting on 27th August, 2014 at Hotel Sun-n-Sand, Juhu, Mumbai.
The other office bearers re-elected as part of Shri Bhatt’s Management Team are Shri Dheeraj Kumar & Shri Siddharth Roy Kapur as Vice Presidents & Shri Ashim Samanta as Treasurer. Additionally, Shri Manish Goswami & Shri Vijay Singh, CEO, Fox Star Studios were elected as Vice Presidents and Ms. Shrishti Arya was elected as Treasurer.
Veteran Guild member Shri Kamalkumar Barjatya was honored by the Council on being accorded the privilege as a Member Emeritus of the Council of Management. Shri Madhu Mantena, Shri Sabbas Joseph & Shri Hiren Gada were elected as new members in the Guild Council of Management for the year 2014-15 whilst Ms. Guneet Monga was nominated by the Council as a Special Invitee.
Kulmeet Makkar will continue to manage the affairs of the Film & Television Producers Guild of India Ltd. as its Chief Executive Officer.
In his opening speech at the Guild Annual General Meeting – President Shri Mukesh Bhatt, in the course of apprising the members about various initiatives of Guild during last 12 months, also said …… “Since my anointment as President 2 years back, we have continued to tread on the holy grail of strengthening ‘Brand Guild’ and in all modesty, the process towards achieving this end has yielded providential results for the Guild. In this endeavor, I would like to mention the name of Kulmeet Makkar, Guild CEO, who has undertaken concerted efforts to give a professional and refined outlook to the Guild in the eyes of all stakeholders. By and large, the Guild has grown in stature over the last 2 years, with the kind of recognition it has been getting from all quarters such as Central & State Governments, foreign delegates & emissaries and friendly trade bodies. This year, with the new Government in place, we hope to establish channels of communication with the new order in our endeavor to further boost the healthy relationship we enjoyed with the previous regime which will positively lead to exponential growth of the film industry in the next 5 years.”
The following are the members of the newly elected Council of Management of Guild:-
1. Shri Mukesh Bhatt (President)
2. Shri Dheeraj Kumar (Vice President)
3. Shri Siddharth Roy Kapur (Vice President)
4. Shri Manish Goswami (Vice President)
5. Shri Vijay Singh (Vice President)
6. Shri Ashim Samanta (Treasurer)
7. Ms. Shrishti Arya (Treasurer)
8. Shri Ramesh Sippy
9. Shri Manmohan Shetty
10. Shri Ashutosh Gowariker
11. Shri Vipul Shah
12. Shri Rakesh Roshan
13. Shri Bobby Bedi
14. Shri Sushilkumar Agrawal
15. Shri Karan Johar
16. Shri Farhan Akhtar
17. Ms. Ekta Kapoor
18. Shri Ratan Jain
19. Shri N P Singh
20. Shri Madhu Mantena
21. Shri Hiren Gada
22. Shri Sabbas Joseph
23. Shri Kiran Shantaram (Permanent Member)
24. Shri Randhir Kapoor (Permanent Member)
25. Shri Amit Khanna (Permanent Member)
26. Shri Kamalkumar Barjatya (Member Emeritus)
27. Shri Rajkumar Kohli (Co-opted Member)
Issued by the Film & Television Producers Guild of India Limited 28th August 2014.
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.
