Shooting the Past 1999

Shooting the Past invites viewers into a world that feels almost untouched by modern life, where the act of preserving the past becomes a powerful lens for telling the remarkable stories hidden in ordinary people’s lives. At the heart of this world is the Fallon Photo Library, a vast trove of photographs housed in a grand Victorian mansion that also operates like a factory for memory. The staff, a small cadre of shy eccentrics, are led by Marilyn Truman and guided by head librarian Oswald Bates. Their careful stewardship turns everyday images into a mosaic of lives once lived, each photo offering a thread that can be pulled to reveal a larger, often unexpected narrative.

A shift happens when an American company buys the building with plans to remodel it into a business school. The company’s president, Christopher Anderson, arrives with the expectation that the library will be emptied and its ten million photographs disposed of. He informs Oswald by fax months earlier of the impending arrival, but somehow the news never makes it up the chain, and the staff finds themselves facing a stark ultimatum: destroy the collection or risk losing everything by selling it off in pieces. The staff members firmly believe that the collection must stay intact, insisting that its value lies not just in the images themselves but in the complex stories they weave together when left whole.

To demonstrate the library’s significance, Marilyn takes the lead in assembling a beguiling tapestry of stories drawn from across the entire photo archive. The research is meticulous, with Oswald spending months poring over details, while Marilyn frames the narratives in a way that highlights connections across time, place, and people. These stories are presented to Anderson as a proof of concept, a persuasive argument that the collection deserves preservation rather than liquidation. Despite their efforts and the breadth of material, the chance of a sale remains slim because most of the photographs are in black and white, which limits their appeal to advertisers and buyers accustomed to color imagery. Nevertheless, the team’s passion and persistence gradually wear down the initial resistance, and Anderson finds himself compelled to reassess his stance.

As tensions rise, Anderson’s frustration grows, and his banishment from the building marks a turning point for Marilyn and Oswald. Oswald, whose dedication to the project has become all-consuming, reaches a breaking point and attempts suicide, leaving behind notes that hint at a final, sweeping story. Marilyn then steps into Oswald’s world with a deeper empathy, arranging the photographs in a way that allows them to speak for themselves. She lays out the images and crafts a narrative about Anderson’s grandmother, a story with emotional resonance that helps illustrate why the entire collection deserves to be saved in its entirety rather than fractured or sold off piece by piece.

In the end, the decisive breakthrough comes when Anderson secures a buyer who recognizes the intrinsic value of keeping all ten million photographs intact. The deal comes from an American buyer who sees the Fallon Library’s potential to illuminate countless lives through the continuity of its complete collection. The film closes on a note of reverence for memory and the idea that preserving the past can illuminate the present in unexpected and powerful ways, proving that a collection built from countless individual moments can collectively reveal a deeper, more meaningful human story than any single image could convey.