Beijing Film Academy

[roddy]

This topic is for discussion and reviews of Beijing Film Academy. Accommodation, courses, on-campus facilities and activities - anything to do with Beijing Film Academy goes in here. If there's a lot of discussion about any one particular topic we might split it into a new thread and leave a link here.

[Milano]

Studied here for three months. Nice way to combine Chinese studies with insight into Chinese film industry. You may meet some of the stars as well.

[Matthew马太]

Will be studying Acting at Beijing Film Academy starting Sept 2013 for a 1 year foreign scholars program. I got the full governmental scholarship from csc. Anyone else studying here?

[bolorod]

i wanna study Act at Beijing Film Academy. And how did people get the full govermental scholarship? does it need to pass the Entrace Exam?

[Pauan]

Anyone who did a master degree there could give some feedback about the university?

[BYSu]

 

 

Will be studying Acting at Beijing Film Academy starting Sept 2013 for a 1 year foreign scholars program. I got the full governmental scholarship from csc. Anyone else studying here?   

 

I am planning to study Acting (1 year short course) this year at BFA as well. Mind sharing your experience over there?

[Pauan]

I studied in BFA for two years in their Chinese Language Program between 2014 and 2016.

I got a scholarship from CSC for master degree at BFA in the directing course. The scholarship would cover one year of chinese language (9/2014 to 7/2015) and 3 years of master degree (9/2015 to 7/2018). When I arrived at the school in september, the school told me that even though I already have the scholarship for the master I still need to pass the entrance examination that is held in chinese to enroll into it. And if I want to enroll in 2015, I should take the entrance examination by the end of 2014. In other words, I would have less than 6 months to learn enough chinese to be able to do the examination. So they suggest me to apply for one more year of chinese language with the CSC, which they granted me. So I studied chinese from 2014 to 2016 and I did the entrance examination in the end of 2015 to enroll it in 2016, which I didn't pass.

Now about the school.

The campus is very small, the location is not bad but is not great. Nearby there are bus stops and subway station which makes it convenient to go anywhere in the city and it's not very far from wudaokou, which is more commercially developed, by bike you could cover the distance in like 20 minutes or so. You can enter and leave the school at any time and the cantee food is not bad compared to other schools canteens that I have tried.

The people responsible for foreign students affairs are not very helpful sometimes arrogant and want things to be done their way ( Sometimes they are nice though, just don't get used to it if that ever happens to you. ), even though sometimes it's not the greatest way. For example when applying for a residence permit, they don't let students do it by themselves, they always hire an agent that collect the passports of all the students and go there in a specific day. But because of that students have to pay an extra fee so the school can pay this agent. Besides that, normally when applying for a residence permit, the bureau of foreigners shrubbles (or whatever it's called, the place where you get your residence permit done) keeps your passport and gives you back a yellow paper with some information about you that could replace your passport in case you need it to travel or stay in a hotel for example.  But since it's an agent doing it, they don't give it back to you, as the agent needs it to take back your passport. If you mention that you want your yellow paper, they can instruct the agent to give it, but you have to wait for the agent's time to resolve the whole process which might take a few weeks between: 1- give your passport to the school, 2-the school give your passport to the agent, 3-the agent go to the bureau to apply for the residence permit, 4-the agent come back to the school with your yellow paper. Then you have to go get your passport back by yourself.

In all this quest, once they let my visa expire before they applied to renew it, even though I gave them my passport in time. So I had to go to the police department and testify that I wasn't an illegal immigrant. 

The chinese classes are kind of messy, but students there tends to be cool. The high points are the chinese language classes about films. they have several levels, in the beginning they teach film vocabulary, and in more advanced levels they teach history of filmmaking, film analysis and some more deep knowledge about filmmaking. At least I was lucky enough to get good teachers in those subjects, but they often change teachers so the quality might as well change.  If you want to go there to focus on language, maybe that's not the best school. I have a korean friend who studied chinese there and she couldn't learn much because the classes were not very well organized even though the classes were not very big, then she went to BLCU and after half an year there I was surprised how her chinese improved in such a short period of time. 

The dorms are nice. It is a six floors building, and international students usually lives in the last two floors, the 3rd and 4th floors are like hotel rooms and fancier, in case they need to host school guests or student's families. Two students per room, they tend to be clean, and everyday during noon there is an ayi that comes to take away your garbage (which I think it is unnecessary as we all can do it by ourselves), every room has a toilet with shower that due to lack of a glass door or any barrier in the shower, makes the whole toilet wet every time you shower. However, sometimes when there are too many foreign students, they put some students to live in the rooms on the 4th floor, which tend to be cozier and they have a bath tube, but usually those rooms only have one desk, while the normal rooms have two. There are also single bedrooms, but those are designated for phd students. on the first floor of the building is where the administrative folks works, which is very convenient for them to keep control over you. 

Eventually the school promotes some activities for foreign students, like trips to other cities. 

That's it. It's not often that I come here, but let me know if you have more doubts about the school on facebook: Pauan Soares (though I am not often there either, but way more often than here)

[user]

@BYSu @Matthew马太 I am also interested in studying acting through their 1 year program at BFA, would anyone mind sharing their experiences with it/what they've heard about it? There's really not much information about it available online...