The Gym of Hope - The Movie

Thailand | 2025, approx. 45min
Director: Macarena Fuentes, Julian Weber
Cast: Beer Yingsuwannachai, Julian Weber
Production: Punika Rangchaya
Editing: Macarena Fuentes, Julian Weber
Sound: Macarena Fuentes
Genre: documentary, fiction, experimental
Funding: Goethe Institut international coproduction fund

The Gym of Hope is blending different genres such as documentary, fiction, music video and experimental video art into a road trip movie, that accompanies the research and rehearsal process of the artist Beer and Julian traveling from urban Bangkok to the rural region of Trat close to the Cambodian border. They observe, interview and collect movement material for a choreographic work around the topic of hope presented after returning to Bangkok.

From there the movie emancipates and mutates into an independent project, switching between staged scenes, raw observations and poetic moments, giving visibility to the process and rendering the making as artistic material.

Different fictional characters, such as the tourist, the muscles or the agent try to figure out what the gym of hope could be and where to find it. Over time these characters and their story-lines start meeting, affecting and even merge into each other. In doing so the different approaches and boarders between the characters and especially the established dynamics between object and subject are renegotiated.

The movie takes a close look at public gyms and in general physical activities in public space. What are our motivations to move, to play, to train, to build muscles and sculpt our bodies and how are these bodies presented in public. Therefore particularly the phenomena of “random dance” is analyzed, which is mostly practiced at home from social media and then performed at big open events, where everyone can find a moment of visibility on a public stage.

The work explores the construction of man made worlds, the modification and domination of nature and the often distorted simulation of it by theme parks, festivities, holiday resorts and other tourist attractions. How do we move in these constructed spaces and what happens to them when they are abandoned and slowly recaptured by nature. With a playful, partly self ironic approach the movie tries to address questions such as what is authentic, what is constructed or fake and if these terms can even be kept that clearly apart from each other.