THE ROAD TO FAME (成名之路)

The 2014 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival presents THE ROAD TO FAME (成名之路), a documentary following five students during the training process of FAME, a Broadway show, and the paths they pursue after leaving school.

Synopsis

It was Mao himself who founded China's prestigious Central Academy of Drama in 1949, knowing very well how the arts can move, educate, and manipulate the people. Yet the chairman would turn in his grave if he knew that, half a century later, the Academy is proudly entering a cooperative venture with the biggest commercial theater industry worldwide — Broadway, America's Great White Way.     

In 2008, the Central Academy of Drama invited American musical director Jasper Grant to prep a graduating class of Chinese students for their performance of FAME. Originally produced as a movie about high school kids trying to make it big in the performing arts, and later on turned into a successful Broadway musical version, the parallels between the New York characters in the play and the aspiring actors and actresses in Beijing are obvious: all of them aspire to fame. And while the Drama Academy has been known for producing world-class performers in the past — Gong Li and Zhang Ziyi among them — nowadays, graduating students struggle hard to make a living in the entertainment industry.     

Director Wu Hao follows five of the kids during the eight-month training process and documents the different paths they pursue after leaving school. And he shows us how the protagonists' diverse social backgrounds affect their respective destinies. As the daughter of poor working class parents, will Chen Lei's life look differently than that of Chang Xiao, the son of a famous music producer? Luckily, THE ROAD TO FAME eschews the need to prematurely anticipate the outcome of the subjects' quest for fame. Instead, Wu repeatedly introduces unexpected character traits and narrative turns into the film, and he hereby shifts our personal preferences for specific personae. Originally trained as a molecular biologist, Wu proves himself as a skilled documentarian with a fine taste for polarizing characters while he never loses the big picture: the pressures, hopes, and desires of a young generation of only children in a country that has endured an almost unhealthy share of global attention throughout the last two decades.

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