This week, fly-on-the-wall footage from the “Super Girl Singing Contest”, the Chinese “Pop Idol” that became the biggest television hit in the country's history, will have its international premiere at Cambridge University.

“Super, Girls!”, a documentary by visiting fellow Jian Yi that charts the story of the pop cult phenomenon, is being screened at the Cambridge Film Festival on Friday, 6 July.

Filmed independently around the fringes of the controversial show's second series, it follows several 18 to 20-year-old contestants during their search for instant stardom. En route, the viewer is given a rare glimpse of how a new strain of western capitalism – reminiscent in some ways of Britain in the 1980s – is affecting the younger generation in this often closed society.

Following its launch in 2005, and particularly during its second series the following year, the “Super Girl Singing Contest” broke numerous records to become the most popular Chinese television show ever produced. 80,000 pop “wannabes” flocked to its heats and viewing figures for the final peaked at 280 million – dwarfing, for example, the estimated 12 million garnered by “Pop Idol” in the UK.

But with that immense popularity came controversy. Unlike most shows, it was not produced by China Central Television, instead hailing from the decentralised studios of the Hunan TV network. More significantly, the programme was the first ever to allow the Chinese public a chance to vote for their favoured contestants.

In a country where ordinary people cannot choose their political leaders the response was huge. More than 800 million text votes were cast, while the winner of the 2006 series alone received 5.2 million SMS messages of support. Fanclubs, backing different contestants, sprang up all over China. According to some observers, however, the huge wave of spontaneous enthusiasm unnerved the government of the People's Republic. Last year, the programme was banned.

“No-one is quite sure the real reason behind Beijing's order that the programme must stop,” Jian Yi says. “Public fascination with the show was huge – people became crazy about its stars. Many believe that this mass enthusiasm, uncontrolled by the central state TV, was perceived as a threat. It was also low-brow culture, which may have made the government uncomfortable.”

Jian Yi often kept a low profile, filming with a hand-held camera at venues around China during the competition's various rounds. The resulting documentary reveals how the same dreams of celebrity that often characterise British reality TV contestants have likewise penetrated youth culture in the East Asian state.

Many participants describe the emptiness of their day-to-day existence. One contestant, asked why she entered, tells Jian Yi: “I feel like dying when I wake up in the morning”. The viewer meets a former waitress longing for a more romantic life, a fledgling professional singer hungry for a breakthrough in her career, and a lesbian from a super-rich background who swears she will get into the top 10 on the strength of her breeding and familial influence.

“For the first time there is a real polarisation of wealth in China that emerges in the course of this film,” Dr Jane Nolan, a Cambridge University sociologist who has worked with Jian Yi before, explained.

“These girls are part of the first generation who have had to cope with that sort of rising wealth awareness. In many ways this Pop Idol-style competition gave those tensions an opportunity to rise to the surface.”

In particular, the show opened the floodgates to the new culture of opportunistic materialism among China's youth, many of whom are seen cashing in on the periphery of its festival atmosphere.

One of the girls filmed by Jian Yi arrives for her first trial to discover that there are not enough pens for contestants trying to fill in their entry forms. The next day, she returns armed with a packet of biros which she sells outside to make what she describes as “her fortune”. Another entrepreneur loiters outside the main venues selling pocket Karaoke devices to help the aspiring idols hone their talents.

“The film shows the huge changes that have taken place in China,” Jian Yi adds. “When I was in school, everyone was as poor as me. The difference back then, in the 1970s and 80s, was that status came if there were state officials in your family. Now China is increasingly adopting capitalist values and the two ideas are colliding. The young people in this film are looking to be super-rich and to forge super-connections. There is a new self-confidence about them, and a sense of booming prosperity. That has never existed in China before.”

“Super Girls” will be shown at the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse, St Andrews Street, Cambridge, at 6.30pm on Friday 6 July. Jian Yi is a visiting fellow at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge, which will be hosting a seminar about the film on 5 July, at 5pm, at 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge.

For further information, please contact the University of Cambridge Office of Communications on 01223 332300

Email this article to a friend