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
Pather Panchali distributor of Region 2 while Columbia Tri-Star is the distributor of Region 1 format. In 2013, the video distribution company The Criterion Collection, in collaboration with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Film Archive, began the restoration of the original negatives of the Apu trilogy, including "Pather Panchali". These negatives had been severely damaged by a fire in London in 1993, and all film cans and fragments belonging to the Ray films were sent to the Motion Picture Academy for storage, where they lay unseen for two decades. It was discovered upon reexamination that, although many parts of