Movies? In school?
Zero. But then again I graduated high school in 1980 when no one had VCRs. We had 8mm film clips of car crashes and birthing. Setting up a film projector and getting a film to actually play was no trivial task.
In elementary school they gathered everyone in the cafeteria to watch the Mercury space launches live on tv.
We saw some educational films but nothing famous. I
Millions.
I remember seeing the filmstrip version of “Island of the Blue Dolphins” at least once a year in middle school. Other movies I remember being shown at least once per grade include “The Pinballs,” “Rookie of the Year,” (the 70s one about the girl who played Little League) and the ever-popular “Paddle to the Sea.” In 6th grade, as a special end-of-year treat, they packed all the 6th graders into the auditorium to watch the Rankin-Bass Hobbit cartoon. I hated that “Greatest Adventure” song so much!
The summer before my freshman year of high school, I took science class in summer school to get it out of the way so I could take two electives that year. The teacher had a VCR in his classroom and showed movies on Wednesdays. I remember seeing “Sixteen Candles,” “Weird Science,” and something starring Matt Dillon as a cabana boy at a fancy resort (forgot the name).
I wonder if they still show it? I’m pretty certain at one point, it was federal law that all schools had to show The Red Balloon.
My favorite piece of Red Balloon trivia? The director of the film, Albert Lamorisse, also invented the boardgame Risk.
I forgot “The Red Balloon”! My sisters saw it in middle school also. All I have to do is yell “Ballon! Ballon!” in their presence and they remember it.
My English classes in high school saw a lot of Shakespeare adaptations, including the Zefirelli “Romeo and Juliet” - I remember how the tape “mysteriously” developed a bunch of static when the nudity happened. There was also a Royal Shakespeare Company special called something like “An Actor Prepares,” in which two actors discussed their different approaches to playing Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice.”
I remember in grade school they had us all go to the auditorium to watch the Mercury launches on 2 big 19" or 21" bw televisions on tall stands right in front of the stage.
I remember seeing “Ulysses” and there were some others in Jr High.
I know eh, I don’t remember watching an actual movie in class in grade school except “Paddle to the Sea.” We had filmstrips where you had to advance each frame when the cassette tape went “beeeep”. And film projectors with the big reels. Everything we watched was educational, nothing frivolous that I can recall.
We also watched Deliverance (would be 1993-1994), which I can’t imagine could happen today!
Over two semesters in college I had to watch Excalibur 3 times. It just happened that all those courses involved medieval literature and so on.
For a University class in Sound I watched the opening sequence of Groundhog Day about 100 times…
I watched Road Warrior 2 or 3 times for another Sound class to analyse the sound track and the specific importance of music.
In high school we watched some truly horrid productions of Shakespeare – but at the end of Grade 7 watched Weird Science.
I started middle school in '79. The school rented the theater reels and projector for a day.
If it’s an oddity you want, listen up. Since my parochial,elementary school had no AV aids whatsoever, we were trooped, once, to a local Italian language-only movie theater. Yes, children, there were such arcane things in the olden days. The treat, you ask? A film(Italian with English subtitles) about the martyrdom of Saint Maria Gorretti, a virgin who was assaulted, raped and left for dead. The cherry on the sundae of this unforgettable film? She prayed for her rapist as she lay dying. Nobody could eat lunch that day.
That would be The Flamingo Kid.
Although I took Spanish for six years, I don’t remember seeing any films in the language. However, we were treated to a 1962 episode of Biography hosted by Mike Wallace and featuring Francisco Franco, as well as a promotional film for Eurailpass.
I graduated in 1986, FWIW.
I don’t remember anything like that in grade school, but in junior high we saw Giant, Gone with the Wind, and African Queen. There were more, but those are the ones I remember. I think it was at the end of each 9 weeks or something like that. I think we saw a few scenes from *Romeo and Juliet *in 9th grade English, but not the whole thing.
In HS we saw 1776 in History, and because of not enough copies, we watched a somewhat edited version of *Tess *rather than reading Tess of the d’Urbervilles, and I can’t remember what we read that the other section watched.
Once the Forensics season was over, we mostly watched movies during that class time. The only ones I really remember are Bye Bye Birdie and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which started me out in my adoration for Anita Loos. Though I enjoy her memoirs more than her fiction.
Almost forgot college!
I took a “Fiction into Film” class where we’d read the book, watch the film, and then compare/contrast.
Let’s see…The Color Purple and Catch 22 are the ones that I remember the most.
I only remember one specific film from grammar school (this was probably 60 years ago). I’m sure we saw others, but I don’t recall them. Anyway, this one film was about taking care of your teeth. It showed what allegedly happens if you don’t brush. There were miniature demons of some sort hacking into teeth with pickaxes and other tools. By this time I had already suffered an abscess of a couple of my teeth and the film absolutely terrified me to the point of vivid nightmares and resultant inability to sleep. After the second or third time this film was shown, my mother told the school that I was absolutely not to be exposed to this horror again.
Oh, yeah, and we also were shown Mr. Heme or whatever, about blood.
Elementary School:
- Tomes & Talismans in elementary school library
- I think we watched one or more of these Brothers Grimm fairy tales.
- The Red Balloon
- The Challenger explosion
Middle School:
??
High School:
- Schindler’s List
- Destinos! (The Spanish language soap opera for Spanish class)
I’m probably forgetting a lot, but here’s what I remember:
K-4: The Electric Company; the first Space Shuttle launch
5-8: nothing I remember
9-12: the 1964 Of Human Bondage and the 1984 Nineteen Eighty-Four, the latter edited to a PG (if not G) rating by our librarian
Oh, sophomore year, we saw a series of films in Health class. The overall scenario was for some reason the stuff had hit the fan. The most memorable one was the How To film about delivering a baby. Which, years later, I was grateful that I had paid attention. You’d be surprised the alternative uses you can put to the contents of an Electronics Technician’s tool pouch. Tip: Always include some cable ties in your tool pouch.
Oh, how could I forget, in Jr High we saw “LSD: Trip To Nowhere” and “Heroin: Pit Of Despair”. Classic samples of great American Cinema. :rolleyes:
I remember going to see*** Dr Doolittle*** (with Rex Harrison and Samantha Eggar) the last day of class in seventh grade. In high school, my German class went to see a movie (made in Germany) about two friends, one of whom follows Hitler while the other doesn’t. As gruesome as this may sound, it was actually done as a dramedy, with the “evil” friend falling down an elevator shaft after he’s been outed as a Nazi 20 years later. One line I remember well is when the “good” friend confronts a cute girl who’s fallen in love with him:
GF: What would happen if I followed you home from work every day?
CG: I don’t know … but I’d sure like to find out!
(Of course he ends up marrying her, much to his surprise. :rolleyes: )
I remember being shown ***The Salvage Gang ***one afternoon in sixth grade, for no apparent reason:
http://www.horrorview.com/movie-reviews/childrens-film-foundation-the-london-tales