Close Up

19 - 31 December 2022: As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty

as-i-was-moving-ahead-occasionally-i-saw-brief-glimpses-of-beauty-jonas-mekas.jpg

As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
Jonas Mekas, 2000, 288 min
New restored version

"Perhaps Jonas Mekas’s cinematic magnum opus, As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty is the filmmaker’s nearly five-hour film which he describes as “a masterpiece of nothing”. Through the film’s twelve chapters, the artist describes his obsession with nothing – or what’s considered nothing, in cinema, in life. An associative, poetic construction of footage shot between 1970 and 1999, the film finds beauty in the disorder of everyday life. An intensely personal film, As I Was Moving Ahead… is perhaps Mekas’s most revealing work with regards to his family: his wife Hollis, their daughter Oona, and their son Sebastian. The work represents no less than the apex of a 50-year investment in 16mm celluloid filmmaking, showing baptisms, communions, vacations, dinners, breakfasts, lunches, birthdays and so much more." – Herb Shellenberger


Part of our retrospective celebrating Jonas Mekas' Centennial