CHINA: Telling the Olympics story from Beijing eyes

Chinese film maker creates documentary about ordinary Beijingers' Olympics experience

The Straits Times
Saturday, Aug 18, 2007

From billboards across town, the official Olympics slogan shouts: "One World, One Dream."

But what filmmaker Tan Siok Siok really wanted to know was what the men and women scurrying beneath those giant-size words made of the all-important event.

Over the past four months, the 36-year-old has been finding out, by making a documentary film on the personal Olympics dreams of four ordinary Beijingers.

There is the road sweeper who practises a ribbon dance every day in the hope of performing at a Games ceremony, and the 10-year-old boy who pines to somehow beat the official age requirement of 14 to become a torch-bearer.

There is also the ageing, partially-blind triple jumper who trains tirelessly to inch closer to his lifelong dream of winning a Paralympics medal -- even as his sight worsens.

The final character, a cab driver, gives his matter-of- fact take on how Beijing has been overhauled in his 20 years on the road.

The film is just "an elaborate school project," joked Ms Tan, who was a guest lecturer at the Beijing Film Academy from April to July.

Teaching documentary filmmaking to mainland students, she decided to inject a practical touch by making the film -- for which she has put in S$10,000 so far. She also roped in 15 current students and recent graduates from the academy.

Ms Tan said: "I had the Beijing Olympics right at my doorstep. And the Olympics theme is a useful prism through which to look at some very fascinating issues that affect China today -- issues of urban development and transition, and human resilience at a time of seismic change."

"Former farmers still grew maize outside their blocks. They were holding on to old memories though they were physically in a new place," she said, articulating a sentiment familiar to Beijingers who have seen their city morph into a massive construction site.

Directing her first personal film, Ms Tan started out producing news and current affairs programmes at Mediacorp, and then worked for international broadcasters in Taiwan, China and Singapore.

When her as-yet untitled film is completed later this year, Ms Tan will pitch it to Asian TV stations and international film festivals.

She said: "We usually have very polarised perspectives on China: either the Western one which is very critical and always seems to find something inherently wrong with China, or the dominant Chinese view, which offers little distance from the events.

"I'm trying to see if I can find a point of view that is neither of those -- one that is insightful yet not given to emotional extremes."

Date Posted: 8/18/2007