Bala is a 1976 documentary film made by Satyajit Ray, about a Bharatanatyam dancer, Balasaraswati, fondly known as "Bala". The film was jointly produced by National Centre for the Performing Arts and Government of Tamil Nadu. The thirty-three-minute documentary features the life and some of the works by Balasaraswati in the form of narration and dance, starring herself. At the age of fourteen, Ray had seen a performance of Balasaraswati in Kolkata, then known as "Calcutta", in 1935, when she was seventeen years old.Ray had initially planned to make a film on Bala in 1966, when she was in her prime, however he could not start filming until 1976. Though Bala was often called "a revolutionary Bharatanatyam dancer", she had never been filmed till she was 58 years old, in spite of having a career spanned over four decades. Ray decided to make the film on Bala, "the greatest Bharatanatyam dancer ever" according to him, to document her art for future generations with the "main value as archival". When Ray filmed the then 58-year-old Bala for the documentary, she wore the same pair of anklets which she had worn more than fifty years before for her debut performance, at the age of seven. Ray is reported to have said about the delayed filming of the documentary that "Bala filmed at 58 was better than Bala not being filmed at all."The film's script was included in a book named Original English Film Scripts Satyajit Ray, put together by Ray's son Sandip Ray along with an ex-CEO of Ray Society, Aditinath Sarkar, which also included original scripts of Ray's other films.