Central Academy of Drama (中戏） Documentary

[roddy]

The Central Academy of Drama, known as Zhongxi (中戏), is where you want to go to study if you want to be a star. it's notoriously competitive to get in. 

 

BBC4 have a documentary on tonight, The Road to Fame, following a graduating class as they do a version of ... wait for it....Fame! I'll watch it as it may well have some footage of my old stomping grounds in Beijing, and even if it's not very good it's going to be absolutely packed full of pretty young people. I tried to load one of the clips to see if there's much Chinese spoken - hopefully it's subtitled rather than dubbed - but it's loading very slowly and I'm gonna wait forever. 

 

It's already been shown, so maybe someone's already seen it. Should be in BBC iPlayer after tonight, although with the usual regional restrictions.

[Guest realmayo]

I watched this last night, I liked it, lots of Chinese spoken throughout, subtitled not dubbed, as a bonus you get a good bit of beautiful Hubei dialect from the parents of the girl the cameras follow the most.

[roddy]

Just watched it. I quite enjoyed it - it wasn't mind-blowingly good, but nor do I feel like I've been robbed of 80 minutes. 

 

I thought it was very sympathetic and everyone came across pretty well. The generation and wealth gaps were shown, but they weren't shoved down your throat. The teachers and parents were generally more interesting. 

 

What did surprise me was - they just didn't seem that good. This was a graduating class at Zhongxi, I'd have expected them to be pretty much full professional standard, but it hardly came across like that at all. 

 

It's on iPlayer for anyone who wants to watch it, and is geographically blessed. Can't see it anywhere else, I'm afraid.