Road sweeper Liu Zhi had planned to organize a 600-person performance for the 400-day countdown to the Olympics, but his local residence committee denied his request. As a veteran of the Cultural Revolution, he thought it only natural that the Olympic Games would be his calling to organize a grand spectacle. His story is just one of four in the documentary Boomtown Beijing, which shows how the Olympic dream has affected and changed the psyche of ordinary Chinese amid a nation continuing to invent and reinvent its image on the international stage. These stories fill a gap left by the media’s relentless focus on heroes like hurdler Liu Xiang. They are the stories of ordinary people.

The film is a collaborative grassroots project between Singaporean Siok Siok Tan and her students at the Beijing Film Academy. It provides insight into the human aspect of Beijing, beyond the Olympic media frenzy. Siok says that her Chinese students were given the task of finding the film’s characters and they found four individuals who shared their most intimate dreams with the audience, giving the film its authentic feel. Featuring images of a city in transition, with the symbols of the 2008 Olympics always somewhere in the backdrop, the film tells the stories of four Beijingers and how their personal dreams became intertwined with the Olympic dream.

Linked by a cab driver who provides context to the changing landscape, the characters all have dreams that are largely unattainable: one young boy aspires to be a torch bearer, despite knowing that he isn’t old enough to qualify; a blind athlete hopes to be given one last chance at national glory; and a sweeper and self-proclaimed expert of huagun stick play, wants to popularize his special version of the sport in one massive performance, but members of his community block the attempt.

As filmmaker Siok explains, the motivation for making this film was to provide a middle ground between Eastern and Western perspectives, and to "fill in the gaps in the representation of the Olympics." Moving beyond what's represented by the media to the world, the film, shot one year before the Olympics, is an important portrayal of Beijing in transition.