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As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty

Jonas Mekas
2000 United States 288 min

“My film diaries, 1970–1999. It covers my marriage, children are born, you see them growing up. Footage of daily life, fragments of happiness and beauty, trips to France, Italy, Spain, Austria. Seasons of the year as they pass through New York. Friends, home life, nature. Nothing extraordinary, nothing special, things that we all experience as we go through our lives. There are many intertitles that reflect my thoughts of the period. The soundtrack consists of music and sounds recorded mostly during the same period from which the images came. The piano improvisations are by Auguste Varkalis. Sometimes, I talk into my tape recorder, as I edit these images, now, from a distance of time. The film is also my love poem to New York, its summers, its winters, streets, parks.”

Jonas Mekas

Jonas Mekas

Jonas Mekas has always filmed his everyday environment: we associate his works with New York, his beloved adopted city, with the apartments he lived in or those of his friends. But he spent much of his time in his 4-km long garden, just near his residence: Central Park.
© Sophie Bassouls / Sygma / Getty

Production , cinematography, sound, editing :
Jonas Mekas

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