Precious Images

20 years before youtube, the mother of all compilation videos. Trawling the DGA website this morning waiting on today’s nominees, I ran across the week-old news that Chuck Workman’s extraordinarily short, Precious Memories, winner of the 1986 Oscar for Short Film, has been selected for preservation in The National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. No matter how many times I’ve seen this montage, it never fails to choke me up right around the 5-minute mark.

Precious Images was commissioned by the DGA to commemorate its 50th anniversary as part of a year of celebration. The film went on to win the Academy Award for Best Short Film, Live Action.

“Chuck Workman’s legendary compilation film to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Directors Guild of America is also a dazzling celebration of the first near-century of American cinema,” the announcement said. “The pioneer of rapid-fire film history montages, Precious Images contains in the space of seven short minutes nearly 500 clips from classic films spanning the years 1903-1985. It became the most influential and widely shown short film in history.‚Äù