The Songs of the Little Roads

Satyajit Ray’s classic Pather Panchali (1955) holds a special place in my heart. Like many of us who grew up enjoying and loving cinema, we want to share that experience with others. Before he became a filmmaker, Ray co-founded the Calcutta Film Society in 1947, just after India’s independence. When the first International Film Festival of India began in 1952, the film society was carefully consulted for its suggestions to the program. The film society that was once small and struggling could suddenly be appreciated after years of growth. 

Similarly, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s novel Pather Panchali was written in 1929, but he could not have foreseen that Ray would one day adapt it into a film. Pather Panchali, or The Song of the Little Road, was destined to become one of the Top 100 film classics of all time. For me, the road of cinema is filled with these songs. These songs about life’s miraculous small moments have followed me throughout my career, as I walk down these little cinema roads.

Twenty years ago, I walked down the little road of Jogjakarta, encouraged by my friend, Garin Nugroho, to start the Jogja Asian FF (JAFF) with his group of film friends – Budi Irawanto, Ifa Isfansyah, Ajish Dibyo, Ismail Basbeth, Yosep Anggi Noen, and Dyna Herlina, the original seven samurai, as it were. The festival was then workshopped into existence with just over a year of preparation. 

For a long time, Garin and I had argued over the concepts of local and global, and how both ideas must somehow be compatible to share a sense of equality. Globalization had flattened world cultures, and it often took little seeds, planted in remote, unassuming areas, that would blossom into something unpredictable, returning color to the global monochrome. That was Jogjakarta 20 years ago. Who could have predicted that awareness of regional cinema culture would prompt so many Jogjakartan filmmakers to return to their hometowns to live and work on their new films, away from Jakarta, the capital city? Who could have known that this little festival, struggling financially for 15 years, could have gone from strength to strength?

I found those little roads again when I traveled to the Kwanteo Film Festival in July this year, in Shantou, Guangdong, in southern China. Helmed by two old friends, Chen Gong Ming and Chen Bai Qi, and 20 volunteers, this festival celebrated its 10th anniversary and is known for incubating the New Wave of Chaoshan Cinema, which began in 2015. Chaoshan is the region (including the cities of Shantou, Jieyang, and Chaozhou) where people who speak the Teochew dialect come from. There are historical antecedents for this wave. For example, Zheng Zhengqiu, the father of Chinese film, and Cai Cusheng, the father of social realism in Chinese cinema, both came from Chaoshan. Both these pioneers exemplify how Chinese film had its roots in the South, but, more importantly, how the Teochew people often migrated to avoid disaster and to seek new vistas. Hence, in the 19th century, the Teochews migrated into the Nanyang, today’s Southeast Asia, where they landed in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and as far as Indonesia.

This fact was brought home to me when I saw Common Paper (2025), a film on which Teochew cinematographer and associate director Wei Zhuang worked. The film, about a girl so traumatized that she stops speaking, features an unusual scene in which the characters watch a sequence from Garin Nugroho’s Opera Jawa (2006). Wei explained that the film’s director, Zhang Jiuwo, had visited Jogjakarta for the first time, and that, prior to the trip, the group decided to watch Opera Jawa, their first Indonesian film. It made such an impression on them that it appears as a film quote. In specific ways, Common Paper and Opera Jawa mirror one another. Both films use symbols and metaphors to communicate when direct speech fails.

The waves of Asian regional cinema have been breaking ceaselessly. From Jogjakarta after 20 years, from the Philippines since 2008, and now from Kwanteo after 10 years; these are the times when East meets East. These are the songs of the little roads.