Balu Mahendra to the script". As a film-maker, he claimed himself as belonging to the realistic way of story-telling devised by Satyajit Ray and Vittorio De Sica. Mahendra was drawn towards realistic cinema after watching Ray's "Pather Panchali" (1955). He is credited as being one among the earliest filmmakers to bring "naturalism" in Tamil cinema in the 1970s. He usually photographed, scripted and edited all his films. His films were characterised by strong "visual appeal" and minimal number of characters. A majority of his films centre on the complexity of human relationships and are known to portray women as strong characters. Although
Satyajit Ray and "Rupasi Bangla", Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's "Chander Pahar", Jim Corbett's "Maneaters of Kumaon," and Jawaharlal Nehru's "Discovery of India." He worked on a children's version of "Pather Panchali," a classic Bengali novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, renamed as "Aam Antir Bhepu" ("The mango-seed whistle"). Designing the cover and illustrating the book, Ray was deeply influenced by the work. He used it as the subject of his first film, and featured his illustrations as shots in his ground-breaking film. Along with Chidananda Dasgupta and others, Ray founded the Calcutta Film Society in 1947. They screened many foreign films, many of which Ray watched