Precious Images

2025-09-02T06:58:07Z

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{{Use American English|date=January 2025}}
{{Infobox film
| name = Precious Images
| image =
| caption =
| director = [[Chuck Workman]]
| producer = [[Chuck Workman]]<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A10X42GHva8 "Precious Images" winning the Oscar® for Live Action Short]</ref>
| writer =
| narrator =
| starring =
| music =
| cinematography =
| editing = [[Chuck Workman]]
| studio = [[Directors Guild of America]] (DGA)
| distributor = [[Cineplex Odeon Films]]
| released = {{Film date|1986|04||[[WorldFest Houston]]}}
| runtime = 8 minutes
| country = United States
| language = English
| budget =
}}
'''''Precious Images''''' is a 1986 [[short film]] directed by [[Chuck Workman]]. It features approximately 470 half-second-long splices of movie moments through the history of [[cinema of the United States|American film]]. Some of the clips are organized by genre and set to appropriate music; musicals, for example, are accompanied by the title song from ''[[Singin' in the Rain]]''. Films featured range chronologically from ''[[The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)|The Great Train Robbery]]'' (1903) to ''[[Rocky IV]]'' (1985), and range in subject from light comedies to dramas and horror films.

==Production==
''Precious Images'' was commissioned by the [[Directors Guild]] for its 50th anniversary.<ref name=MacDonald>MacDonald, Scott (2005) ''A critical cinema: interviews with independent filmmakers,'' University of California Press, p238-239</ref> Workman had previously produced two documentaries, ''The Director and the Image'' (1984) and ''The Director and the Actor'' (1984), for the Guild.<ref name=MacDonald/> Editing took about three months to complete.<ref name=MacDonald/>

''Precious Images'' features half-second-long splices from approximately 470 American films. Chuck Workman described the film's editing structure as "a sprint. You take a breath and you ''go''."<ref name=MacDonald/>
<blockquote>"Of course, I had so many movies I wanted to include that the time constraint forced me to compress the film more and more. The cutting got faster and faster, but I realized that the film was still working. And I was moving things around, and it was ''still'' working. I started finding these wonderful little combinations of shots, the kind of edits that I'd been doing for years in other things, but suddenly in this film I wasn't selling anything. It was a wonderful moment for me."<ref name=MacDonald/></blockquote>

==Release==
''Precious Images'' won the [[Academy Awards|Oscar]] for [[Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film|Live Action Short Film]] during the [[59th Academy Awards|1987 ceremony]],<ref>[https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1987 1987|Oscars.org]</ref> where it was featured in its entirety. In 1996, the film was reissued with new scenes from more contemporary films up to that point. It was also shown every 15 minutes within London's [[Museum of the Moving Image (London)|Museum of the Moving Image]] since its 1988 opening, but this very popular attraction was closed in 1999.

The film was screened out of competition at the [[1986 Cannes Film Festival]].<ref name="festival-cannes.com">{{cite web |url=http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/841/year/1986.html |title=Festival de Cannes: Precious Images |access-date=2009-07-18|work=festival-cannes.com}}</ref>

==Recognition==
In 2009, ''Precious Images'' was selected for preservation in the United States [[National Film Registry]] by the [[Library of Congress]] as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".<ref>{{Cite news|title=25 new titles added to National Film Registry |newspaper=Yahoo News |publisher=Yahoo |date=2009-12-30 |url=http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091230/ap_en_mo/us_classic_films_glance |access-date=2009-12-30 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100106004526/http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091230/ap_en_mo/us_classic_films_glance |archive-date=January 6, 2010 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Complete National Film Registry Listing |url=https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing/|website=Library of Congress|access-date=2020-05-07}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Michael Jackson, the Muppets and Early Cinema Tapped for Preservation in 2009 Library of Congress National Film Registry|url=https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-09-250/2009-selections-to-the-national-film-registry-announced/2009-12-30/|website=Library of Congress|access-date=2020-05-07}}</ref>

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
*[https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/precious_images.pdf ''Precious Images'' essay by Dale Hudson and Patricia R. Zimmermann at National Film Registry]
*{{IMDb title|0091787|Precious Images}}
* [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091787/movieconnections List of all films featured in ''Precious Images'']
*[https://vimeo.com/181804469 Original 1986 version] and [https://vimeo.com/47946329 1996 reissue] (latter officially posted by Workman on [[Vimeo]])
*''Precious Images'' essay by Daniel Eagan In America's Film Legacy, 2009-2010: A Viewer's Guide To The 50 Landmark Movies Added To The National Film Registry In 2009–10, Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2011, {{ISBN|1441120025}} pages 178-179 [https://books.google.com/books?id=4GNRD_icEmkC]
{{Academy Award Best Short}}

[[Category:1986 films]]
[[Category:American independent films]]
[[Category:American collage films]]
[[Category:1986 short documentary films]]
[[Category:Live Action Short Film Academy Award winners]]
[[Category:Films directed by Chuck Workman]]
[[Category:United States National Film Registry films]]
[[Category:Compilation films]]
[[Category:1986 independent films]]
[[Category:1980s English-language films]]
[[Category:1980s American films]]
[[Category:English-language documentary films]]
[[Category:English-language short films]]
[[Category:English-language independent films]]
[[Category:American short documentary films]]

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Precious Images