Moving Pictures was a television series devoted to film that aired on BBC 2 from 1991 to 1996. It was presented by Rock Follies screenwriter Howard Schuman.
Each program was composed of several short films on different cinematic subjects and not necessarily on current releases. Although it never achieved high ratings, Moving Pictures was frequently used to teach film studies. Interviewed on the set of Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino told John Travolta it was the best show about movies on television. Director Mike Figgis credited a film about himself with salvaging his career after it showed the other side of the story regarding the making of his film Mr. Jones.
The series finished in 1996, largely due to the huge cost of paying for film clips, but excerpts from it have since appeared as supplementary material on DVD releases. The Criterion Collection editions of Chungking Express and Straw Dogs include Moving Pictures documentaries on Wong Kar-Wai and Sam Peckinpah respectively.
Famous quotes containing the words moving and/or pictures:
“Imagination could hardly do without metaphor, for imagination is, literally, the moving around in one’s mind of images, and such images tend commonly to be metaphoric. Creative minds, as we know, are rich in images and metaphors, and this is true in science and art alike. The difference between scientist and artist has little to do with the ways of the creative imagination; everything to do with the manner of demonstration and verification of what has been seen or imagined.”
—Robert A. Nisbet (b. 1913)
“We don’t know any more about pictures than a kangaroo does about metaphysics.... To us, the great uncultivated, it is the last thing in the world to call a picture. Brown said it looked like an old fire- board.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)