Shooting the Past

"Shooting The Past" was a critically-lauded television drama by Stephen Poliakoff, produced by TalkBack Productions for BBC Two and first shown in 1999. It was TalkBack's first drama production, the company being mainly known for its television comedy work. Focused around a photographic library threatened by closure, and the lives of its eccentric staff, it featured Timothy Spall and Lindsay Duncan, was awarded Best Drama Series at the Royal Television Society Awards of the same year and received other international awards, including the Prix Italia.

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Shooting the Past delves into a world quite separate from modern life, and demonstrates that the preservation of the past, in order to tell the extraordinary stories of the lives of ordinary people, can be astonishingly powerful and revealing. An American company buys the building in which the Falham Photo Library is kept, planning a complete remodeling and modernisation. The company president expected the library of ten million photographs (most of them black and white) to have been completely evacuated before his arrival, and tells the staff that the majority of the collection must be destroyed if not sold. Staff members believe that the collection must be kept in its entirety, not broken up or sold to different buyers. To prove the value of their library, the group presents the company president with intriguing stories put together by researching photos from all over the collection, including finally the history of his own grandmother. He eventually rescues the collection by finding a buyer who will accept all ten million pictures.

Production

The collection's photos, as seen in this series, are drawn from Britain's greatest picture library, the Hulton Collection, which had its origins with the photos taken for "Picture Post" Magazine (1938-57). At least two of Bert Hardy's photos, for example, can be seen in this series, including his view of a panda "taking a picture" of Mr. Hardy's son Michael. The Hulton Collection is part of Getty Images, the world's largest picture library as of early 2008. [ [http://corporate.gettyimages.com/masters2/conservation/articles/HAHistory.pdf The Hulton Archive, A History in Pictures] Webpage found 2008-03-29.]

The two stories which staff members present to Mr. Anderson are fictional accounts created for this film. According to Poliakoff on the commentary track of the DVD, Lily Katzmann, the Jewish girl, was played by Emma Sackville. Hettie, the Irish musician, was played by a model whom Poliakoff did not name.

References

Further reading

*cite journal |first= Amy|last= Holdsworth|year= 2006|title= 'Slow Television' and Stephen Poliakoff's Shooting the Past|journal= Journal of British Cinema and Television|publisher= Edinburgh University Press|url= |volume= 3|issue= 1|pages= 128–133|doi= 10.3366/JBCTV.2006.3.1.128

External links

*
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfilms/catalogue/shootingthepast.shtml Information] from the BBC
* [http://www.gettyimages.com/archival Getty Image Archive] Current home of the Hulton collection.
* [http://shootingthepast.tripod.com/shootingthepast.htm Shooting the Past Fansite] Contains some of the stories from the film, reviews and articles, background information and links.