En el camino, de cuando en cuando, vislumbré breves momentos de belleza

The concept of the movie works, the image are sometimes mesmerizing and the comments interesting and funny. When the right combination of music and shots come together it is very nice.

That said it could have been shorter, some parts are quite repetitive, there's like 5 "ecstasy of summer in NYC", several shots of winters that are very similar, etc. And while the shaky, unfocused shots have their charm, they can become tedious. Jonas Mekas does tell you at some point he's not a film maker, but that's a sometimes a bit too apparent in the work itself.

That said it's really good material if you want to zone out, you can watch this with fleeting attention and not miss much of the experience.

I think it is sort of a misconception to say that this film is about the beauty of life, and nostalgia for the past. Through the narration and the titles, ambiguity is introduced into the mix. Mekas remarks multiple times the fact that this images are to an extent unreal: people are not so innocent as these images show them to be, people do not love each other as much, other people's perceptions of the same events are quite different, and he isn't just filming his children but he is inventing his own childhood through them. "This is a political film", says the movie repeatedly, and yet in the artificial idealized world of the film politics is entirely absent -there's no poverty, no war, no questioning of his bourgeois lifestyle-, and that's precisely the point: to show not how the world is, but how we want it to be, and how that desire can sometimes become a shallow fantasy. We long for paradise, but paradise is lost. We can only get glimpses of it, not in everyday life, but through it, beyond it, inside us.

My complain with the movie is a matter of form. I just don't like the accelerated frame rate, the fast cuts, the repetition, the inflated length, the out of tune music. I sort of enjoyed it for the first hour and a half, but after that it became a blur. It had in me the effect of starting out as a beautiful experience and ending as a nightmarish reality without meaning from which I just wanted to escape; one is dying to know people's names, to hear someone's voice (besides the rather silent Mekas), and to stay in one place for a while. But then again, that feeling is also part of Mekas' scheme. Beauty comforts us by what it evokes, but hurts us by how unreachable it actually is.

Beautiful,universal,poetic... Watching it you realise that all you are seeing in this film is in your life to,in life of your friends,people you know..The captured moments of life are precious and beautiful

When i stumbled upon this film i thought that it is a wonderful idea and i was really excited to watch it. I understand that a certain rawness can be part of an artwork, but if you make a film and you want the recipient to stay with you for over 4 hours, i think it s also important to make it somewhat watchable. Sadly the shaky camera work and the way it is edited does not work for me. The fast cuts, the low frame rate and the changes in tempo make it very hard to get in to the mood of the moment. He seems to have a had a very nice life and i would have loved to participate in it for a bit longer, but i had to drop out after 30 minutes or so.

As I Was Moving Ahead is a record of people's subtle feelings, emotions, everyday joys as recorded in the voices, faces, and small daily activities of people I've met, or lived with, or observed- something I've been recording for years. In contrast to the spectacular, entertaining, sensational, dramatic activities that dominate a great deal of contemporary filmmaking. All this now has to do with my understanding and conviction of what acts really affect the positive changes in man, society, humanity.I am interested in recording the subtle, almost invisible actions, experiences, feelings as opposed to the harsh, harsh, loud, violent activities and political actions of our time and, in particular, the political systems of our time.

• by Jonas Mekas