'Urban Movement' Makes Beijing and Its Citizen Athletes Look Just Awesome

If you woke up Friday morning and went to ballet, played basketball, did capoeira, Crossfit, muay thai, or went running, then you'll feel the spirit captured in a new short film by two Beijingers, director/cinematographer Montague Fendt and photographer Stefen Chow called Urban Movement.

The video itself was intended as a workout – for a camera, in this case Nikon's D5 DSLR. Fendt and Chow worked with local athletes and artists in different disciplines, who put themselves through their paces as they put the camera through its set of tests.

"Both Montague and me are athletes. Montague is a championship cyclist, and I was a mountaineer. So I think we both understand the psyche of athleticism, especially in busy cities like Beijing. You pound and you work in tight spaces, and how do you show that? So I suppose we really wanted to explore in our adopted city what made people click," said Chow, who has summited Himalayan peaks including Mount Everest and Cho Oyu.

"We just wanted to see how we could create this through a visual means. The people that we met were very generous and very kind. Most of them hold day jobs, they work on a daily basis in Beijing, and yet they take hours to stay active and stay focused, as an extension of what they do in their daily life. Urban Movement is really a project that Montague and I conceptualized together, and we hope that people like it," Chow told the Beijinger.

The result is a 02:23 piece that not only highlights the people and their pursuits, but that Beijing is a beautiful place, at least most days, to participate in those activities, and, well, move. The film includes scenes near Gulou and the Forbidden City, and inside gyms and training facilities including Chaowai SOHO's Capital Training Center.

Check out the whole video below, or for the YouTube version, click here. We recommend that Beijingers and other viewers in China watch the Youku-hosted version and push the HD up as high as your device can stand.

We love Beijing every day, but when we see something like this, we love our city even more.

More stories by this author here.

Email: stevenschwankert@thebeijinger.com
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Photos: Montague Fendt/Stefen Chow