The only video I ever saw in school were those educational videos. We didn’t seeTV or theatrical releases.
Couldn’t help but notice…
… that if any movie could have parts of it justifiably washed out by sunlight, it would be one on that topic!!!
One odd choice was Bless the Beasts & Children, which ham-handedly tried to tap into the same youthful rebellion as Billy Jack. It was about a bunch of maladjusted summer camp boys who made a crusade out of freeing a herd of buffalo from creeps who shot them in a tiny pen. The only notable cast members were Bill Mumy and Bruce Glover. Why my school showed that in the auditorium is a mystery to me. The Carpenters performed the crappy theme song.
Ones I remember from elementary school: Free to Be You and Me and Bicycles Are Beautiful with Bill Cosby (who pronounces “bicycle” as “buy cycle”).
From high school: We took a field trip to see Mel Gibson’s Hamlet. I think we also saw Zefferelli’s Romeo & Juliet. We also saw a Disney cartoon on venereal disease!
From university: I took a French class that had a conversation group once a week; in it, we watched Astérix chez les Bretons and the Flintstones episode where Fred and Barney/Arthur went hunting for snorkasaurus (le groignosaur).
I was in high school, and there was an odd “art film” where a still-life of fruits was slowly devoured by animated flies, to the background of Vivaldi’s Concerto for Diverse Instruments with Mandolins in C.
The film was dumb and pointless, but that piece of music is my very favorite of all the music I’ve ever ever heard. (This obviously is not the film in question, but it is the specific piece of music.)
When I was in high school, we would watch a lot of movies funded by the Canadian Film Board (I went to an American high school). One in particular I remember was, “Why Man Creates”. It was quite entertaining the first time I saw it, but it was very popular with the teachers, who showed it ad nauseum. It won an Oscar in the short film category, and is on YouTube now. It’s about 24 minutes long.
Movies were not a big part of my schooling. I remember one film about Culloden, and some driver’s ed safety shows. That’s it.
In grade school?
To Sir, With Love
Swiss Family Robinson
Mame
Godspell
The Sound of Music
Plus a bunch of Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts.
In my high school Latin class, we complained that other classes got to watch cool movies dubbed in their language, such as Raiders of the Lost Ark in Spanish.
With her surreal sense of humor, the teacher let us watch The Three Stooges Meet Hercules. It was actually pretty good.
I must have seen this gem over a dozen times in grades 7-12 (all these grades were in the same building). It’s called “Why Man Creates” and must have been the teachers’ favorite flick to show whenever they didn’t feel like teaching. By the way, I never saw a VHS or DVD in grades 1-12: they were all 16 mm movies.
We saw all the Tomorrowland films in elementary school.
The Trouble with Angels, 4th or 5th grade, a movie about 2 girls in a Catholic school (which is the kind I went to, as well, natch). The nuns (ours not he fictional ones) covered up the scene where they were shopping for bras with a notecard in front of the projector.
I don’t remember too many from grade school in the 70’s (no TV’s or VCR’s), mostly the usual educational films, The Red Balloon, a few of the standard hippy-trippy anti-drug films, and Telezonia. And then there was The Magic Sneakers. I don’t know why the school had a copy of this, or what was even remotely educational about it, but we were always begging to watch it, and were usually refused because the teachers all thought it was pointless and stupid. Sometimes they’d give in just to shut us up, but it was rare. And one time we were bussed to a theater to see Oliver!, and then had to learn all the songs in music class.
In HS I remember watching Cat’s Eye in 10th grade English for some reason, and in 12th grade English we read and watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Not that one. The one I saw was in the late '90s, early '00s and was about how either lighting or electricity would ground itself. I distinctly remember a creepy male voice saying GROUNDED.
We saw 1984. With glorious bush. Very nice for us adolescent lads. This was at a Catholic school.
I remember once we had a free day at school to go get a movie from the video store, and the boys all wanted an action comedy, the girls all wanted some soppy romance thing, and in the end the Teacher vetoed everyone and played this.
Bush, mmmmmmmmmm! :o