'' 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 '' . " " 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 was n't selling anything . It was a wonderful moment for me . " '' Precious Images '' won the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film during the 1987 ceremony , 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 ( opened 1988 ) but this very popular attraction was closed in 1999
1987 ceremony
59th Academy Awards
Precious Images