Documentary: Senior Year (高三)

Youku Buzz has found an upload of Senior Year (高三). The 94-minute video documents the last year of classes at No. 1 High School of Wuping in Fujian Province and won the best documentary award at the 30th Hong Kong International Film Festival in 2006. Luckily, this version contains English subtitles so everyone can follow along.

The movie summary, from its entry into the 2007 Chicago International Film Festival:

Study Hard! Move Ahead! Be Patriotic! These slogans are drilled into the minds of Chinese boarding school students as they prepare for their college entrance exams. Since most of these teens come from impoverished rural areas, their tuition is paid for by the blood, sweat and tears of their peasant parents, most of whom never made it past junior high, so the pressure to succeed is stifling. To keep up their marks the students must study from dawn until dusk, waking up before the sun to memorize everything from math formulas to propagandist passages. Their desks are piled high with books from every subject and teachers roam between rows to keep these exhausted and diligent kids on task. We glimpse this hectic world through the eyes of a select group of senior students who try to assert their personalities and live out a few teenaged whims like shopping and dating in a strictly controlled environment that doesn’t bolster personal space and freedom. As the battle for success rages on, this intense film provides a harrowing portrait of the new direction of Chinese education, one that aims to mass produce focused, result-oriented over-achievers.

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