We’ve often talked about the mythical proportions the Beijing Olympics have grown to and the feverish levels that personal emotions have reached. It’s thus both refreshing and enlightening to watch a film that focuses on the everyday humanity of the Beijing people and treats the Olympics as merely a background rather than the purpose of their stories.

“Boomtown Beijing” is the new documentary by Tan Siok Siok that is neither a bleeding-heart nationalistic manifesto, nor a raging denunciation of the Olympics. “In short,” she says, “the goal was to make a film that allows for open and varied interpretations. Depending on what background you’re coming from, you can fill in the gaps, make of it what you will, but at the same time, have some empathy for the human beings in the film.”

The film follows the lives of four characters that are each tied to the Games in differing ways. Zhao Hongbo is the most traditional Olympic figure. As a track and field athlete vying for a place on the Chinese national team, “he represents the fundamental Olympic metaphor of athletic endeavor.” However, like all of Tan’s subjects, Zhao has none of the glamorous attributes commonly associated with Olympic heroes. Instead, he is an aging paralympian with increasingly deteriorating eye-sight who trains in his apartment courtyard with often nothing more than an old bungee cord and the local playground equipment. And yet he remains undeterred, “If I have a 1% chance of winning, I’ll train with 100% effort.”

Zhao's hopeful relationship with the Olympics is paralleled by the dreams of Zhou Bo Wenrui, a young boy whose love of the Olympics leads him on a quest to become an official torch-bearer, and Liu Zhi, an elderly road sweeper who hopes to stage his own 100-day countdown ceremony.

While the film is a celebration of the human experience, it does not shy away from the more controversial aspects of China’s road to the Olympic Games. Xu Qing, a taxi driver who embodies the front line of Beijing’s so-called “Olympic public diplomacy,” can only sigh as he reflects on the rapid urbanization and gentrification of Beijing’s landscape over the past half-century, “I’ve seen with my own eyes what was once only on TV…I learned to farm along the third ring road, but everything has been turned into a construction site.”

Though the characters go through moments of disappointment and earnest thoughtfulness, the film always finds light in the strength of the human spirit. And, in the end, isn’t that what the Olympics is all about?

"Boomtown Beijing" will be screened every Saturday and Sunday from 3-5pm at Salud. If you want more information on the film or the director, you can also visit the official Boomtown Beijing website.