Olympics documentary debuts Sunday
The Hollywood Reporter
Olympic documentary debuts Sunday
By Alex S. Dai
April 18, 2008 SHANGHAI –
Boomtown Beijing, a documentary film directed by Tan Siok Siok about the Olympic city and its run-up to the Games, will premiere in Beijing Sunday. The 70-minute film tells the story of three different Beijing residents working to make their personal Olympic dreams come true: an 11-year-old boy wants to beat the odds to become an Olympics torch-bearer; a street sweeper dreams of staging his own mass Olympics countdown performance; and an aging, blind athlete makes one last stab at a Paralympics medal before he retires from competition. The film is an attempt to depict the Beijing Olympics on a human scale,? Tan told The Hollywood Reporter. It looks at everyday life in Beijing and the dreams and aspirations of ordinary Beijing residents the summer before the Olympics come to town.? I also wanted to see if I could find a middle ground between the polarized perspectives of East and West, a point of view that would be engaging to audiences around the world,? she adds. Research and development began in May, 2007 and the film was finished in December, Tan said. The film is an independent production with some in-kind support from the Beijing Film Academy. The direct cost of the project is around S$50,000 (US$37,000).
