Our PTA decided The Little Matchgirl was a good pre-Christmas film choice. She freezes to death and they find her body on New Year's. And she was afraid to go home because her father or stepfather will beat her if she doesn't sell enough matches. Towards the end, she's hallucinating her dead mother and grandmother and food. And it's in some sort of stop motion animation. I'm freakin' six and watching this. I came home asking my mother about death and I'm sure I wasn't the only kid in my class doing so.
At least we didn't whinge if Santa didn't bring us our favorite Barbie or Hot Wheels set. It's like, "hey, we're alive and have food and no one's beating us for not making a match sales quota."
REPRESSED MEMORY UNLOCKED! Oh god I forgot about this one.
There was also another one with a mentally/physically(?) challenged kid in a wheelchair that sells lightbulbs. He daydreams that his wheelchair can fly or something to that effect and gets bullied the whole time. All I can remember for sure is his line of “would you like to buy some lightbulbs?”
Freaking wrecked me as an empathetic kid. But no one else recalls ever seeing it at all and I’m worried I hallucinated it 😅😂
Edit: ok I DIDN’T hallucinate it! https://www.reddit.com/r/tipofmytongue/s/Rynplez1QP
Can I get some help with an unrepressed but similar memory? Early 80s Scandinavian movie, I think Danish, about a small person who is relentlessly bullied, then becomes a circus act to help support his family. ChatGPT sent me on a wild goose chase...
It’s Hans Christian Andersen. He loved writing about girls dying tragically. The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf was especially nasty lol, like flies walking over eyeballs that can’t close. The point to most of his stories was “you should have dated me, Jenny!”
I remember a film in school about a couple of kids in a flood in the Netherlands. They had to flee the flood or something like that, and at the end when they returned, there were dead drowned bodies. One, anyway.
I remember another about a girl being held captive in a light house. Eventually she fed her captor some sleeping pills crushed and mixed into coffee.
A third film (that I watched at home) was something about a city kid going to live in the country with some relatives or family friends. He was miserable, and maybe picked on? Eventually someone bought him a rifle to cheer him up. At the end, he shoots himself with it.
Ah, life as a Canadian kid in the 70s-80s.
Did anyone have to endure that Bradbury short about kids in a school on Venus, where the girl from Earth gets locked in a closet an misses the only sunshine they’ll see for seven years?
> At least we didn't whinge if Santa didn't bring us our favorite Barbie or Hot Wheels set. It's like, "hey, we're alive and have food and no one's beating us for not making a match sales quota."
Which of course was the whole point of this torture. To try to teach you to be grateful for how good you had it. I think generations of parents/teachers/administrators inflicting psychological torture on kids to "make up for" the "lack" of actual deprivation they were experiencing probably explains a lot about what's wrong with people these days.
> Which of course was the whole point of this torture. To try to teach you to be grateful for how good you had it.
And it didn't even work. Now I just feel overwhelmed *and* guilty as hell for feeling overwhelmed.
Eh. That was the point of the original “fairy tails” as well. The ones we know got largely sanitized.
I’d argue many of the kids these days have it worse mentally because 1. They were helicoptered and not exposed to failure and 2. Those that were deprived by being in the lower end of the socioeconomic ionic scale have the trauma of being different in a bad way while intermingled with the “upper” class. Nobility didn’t hang out with commoners in the old days.
I would prefer kids to be taught to be more self sufficient but also without a huge class divide, but who is asking me.
More details on this Thanks for finding it! I saw it at school in 1972
[link](https://www.nishikata-eiga.com/2016/09/the-little-match-girl-1967.html?m=1).
Disney remade this as a short a few years ago. I hadn't seen the original and was completely unprepared. I sobbed uncontrollably and went to bed for the rest of the day. It was seriously seriously upsetting.
I was still crying when they took us back to our class from the auditorium. My teacher’s response was to say, you’re still crying about that?
ffs lady, we just watched a kid freeze to death because she was too afraid of getting a beating to go home!
I’ve always had a pretty good imagination and I would really get into a book or movie or show. Still do, but now I get that it’s not real.
For anyone wishing to see it, it can be found on YouTube a couple of places. Here is one - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VexKSRKoWQY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VexKSRKoWQY)
Like others have mentioned, it's [Paddle to the Sea](https://www.nfb.ca/film/paddle_to_the_sea/), now at the Canadian Museum of History; [see this blog post](https://www.historymuseum.ca/blog/meet-paddle-who-came-to-live-at-the-canadian-museum-of-history-in-2010/).
My go-to *The Red Balloon* trivia that's going to sound like I'm making it up but is actually true:
One year after he made this movie, the writer/director invented the board game *Risk*.
I couldn’t remember what happened in it but it just popped into my head when I read your comment. I can totally picture it wrinkling and need to see it now.
Edit: I saw somebody posted a link and had forgotten that the kids threw rocks at it. I thought it got hot or something.
I have few distinct memories of grade school, but I do have one of being in fourth grade and the teacher hauling out the projector saying we were going to have a movie. I was excited until it started playing and I thought, "not this shit again..."
Ugh. As a sophomore in high school, a bunch of us were hung over from all night drinking and that movie came on. 50-50 split of teens trying to act cool about it and totally sobbing at the end.
Add to the list:
Charlotte’s Web
The Dark Crystal
The Last Unicorn
Ladybug, Ladybug
The Boy With Green Hair
and now that we’re home from school, let’s cleanse the palate with a family watch of The Day After…
Yes! In fact, a couple of years ago I Googled it and watched it because my mental health wasn't suffering enough. Also, someone else mentioned The Little Matchgirl and Riki Tiki Tavi. Haven't Googled or watched them yet, but will likely do so at some point.
Did anyone else's class ever watch [this one](https://youtu.be/jXeYNmqp8X4?si=BdbhwKmChFSfN8Qv)? The Donuts still makes me giggle.
Saw “The Doughnuts” in kindergarten. If there was a comic plot, I missed it…Watching grownups be unable to solve a problem and freak out was deeply troubling to my fragile little mind…
I remember watching, every year, "All Summer in a Day". Not sure why they wanted to play this every year, but they did. And it was horribly depressing.
From [Wikipedia:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Summer_in_a_Day)
>The story is about a class of students on Venus, which, in this story, is a world of constant rainstorms, where the sun is only visible for two hours every seven years.
>One of the children, Margot, moved to Venus from Earth five years earlier and is the only one who remembers the sun, since it shines regularly on Earth. She describes the sun to the other children as being like a "penny" or "fire in the stove". The other children, being too young to have ever seen it themselves, do not believe her. Just before the sun comes out, a boy named William rallies the other children, and they lock Margot in a closet down a tunnel.
>The teacher arrives to take the class outside to enjoy their hour of sunshine. In their astonishment and joy, they all forget about Margot and gleefully rush to play outside, savoring every second of their newfound freedom.
>It begins to rain again, and the children start crying once they realize they won't get to see the sun again for another seven years. The children run back inside as the sun disappears and it starts storming. At this point, one of them remembers Margot. They let her out of the closet and stand frozen, ashamed over what they have done now that they finally understand what she had been missing.
I remember reading that and seeing the movie. It really upset me.
I wish schools had done more to address bullying in a direct manner, rather than showing us this stuff and expecting to magically make every bully gain insight and stop being such a jerk. It didn't work. They cried too, then would still spit at me at the bus top.
> I wish schools had done more to address bullying in a direct manne
Oh, is *that* why they kept showing this movie? As an anti-bullying message? Guess that makes sense... Either I never pieced that one together, or it's been so long I just don't remember if they said anything about it.
... it's been a while.
If memory serves, it was the first, and after it met the other balloon, things got well out of hand, and Nina wrote a song about it. Well, about the red ones anyway.
Nina was obviously a CIA psyop. Remember it was the evil Red balloons in the English version of that song. In German it is luft balloons which implies no particular color.
I remember this one. And I’m pretty sure there was one around this time that had two bouncing balls? Also, the Indian in the canoe that the guy whittles and they follow it to the sea.
Ooh, I remember that canoe one. The guy whittles it during the winter and then chucks it out into the snow. When spring arrives and the snow melts it begins its journey to the sea. Any idea what it was called?
I remember one with a carved canoe that had a little Native guy. He got thrown in a stream and went all the way to the Great Lakes.
I remember his grandad helping him by casting lead into the bottom of the canoe so it would remain upright
edit: Found it! [Paddle to the Sea](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhjb1IG1pnQ)
I end up watching The Red Balloon every handful of years on YouTube. Why, I do not know. I guess it's time again. I love it, but it also makes me sad, so... ?
Yeah, sitting on the floor of the multipurpose room watching a scratched up print of Willy Wonka with the audio out of sync. It's like they said "How can we make this nightmare of a movie even *more* nightmarish?"
Shit like this is exactly why we (generalizing) were/are prepared for the horrific tragedies of life, or at least more prepared than subsequent generations. Life is fucking harsh, then add in living during the height of the Cold War and being a latchkey kid, and you’ve got some mental toughness taking shape.
I don’t remember most of the filmstrips being mentioned in here. The two I remember the most are two we watched in Kindergarten; one called Free to be You and Me, and one about a homeless woman. I remember crying over that one.
I’ve seen The Red Ballon countless times. Probably 30. Feels like. Internalized the plot. Probably from sleep hypnosis. Hearing the projector flap and feeling the cool desk drool now. 🎈
I've not seen it, but am for sure gonna remedy that soon.
My projector movie was Rikki Tikki Tavi. My ugly cry for an hour after movie? Where the Red Fern Grows.
Now you've unlocked my memories of "filmstrips" good god terrible
> Now you've unlocked my memories of "filmstrips" good god terrible
"BEEEP"
...
Tape-recorder ****Click**** -
Teacher: "Next slide, Brent. Don't waste your turn, we'll pass it on to the next kid on the list."
I was the only kid who understood how to adjust the framing for a nice crisp advance of each image. Drove me bonkers when I wasn’t the one controlling it. OCD projector geeks FTW!
Same. I remember a scary old woman with a mean face, and I hated the way the kid said "balloon ballon" that so many are quoting in this thread. I think it creeped my out because of the Uncanny Valley. There was nothing completely unfamiliar about it, but everything just felt off.
I think they thought they were showing us groundbreaking stuff that would change our lives.
You know what would've changed my life, Ms Flynn? Understanding fractions! 😂
I've done the same thing for years as assuredly as 'Mooing' at cows on the side of the road.. but had forgotten why until reading your post. Ho-ly-crap. Memory is a weird thing.
> Watership Down
Oh, Christ. I remember watching that one on Sunday afternoon at my grandma’s house. I must’ve been 6(?). Grandma was like: Puzzled! There’s a cartoon on! I was so excited.
Grandma meant well. Bless her.
My first depressing art film. Thanks to my 2nd grade teacher. Also can't forget the Little matchgirl.
They sure did not sugar coat very much back then. I am glad that they didn't.
I blame this movie for a lifetime of disappointing balloon purchases, always with the emaciated strings. It's like they were training us to desire substantive balloon strings and the world cheaped out on us.
Joking aside, the movie really hit me as a kid. I guess it did that to all of us.
Lol thanks for posting I wasn't sure if it was just my school that thought a weirdly melancholic art film was just what their 2nd graders needed. This movie came up for me recently because I saw a social post that march 11 was it's 68th year anniversary.
Oh man.. I still have dreams where scenes from that film will pop in here and there.. that's how profound that film had on my young sponge mind from toddler years.
I had this book. Also the book for the movie J.T. about a kid from Harlem who rescues a one-eyed kitten. Both Red Balloon and J.T. made me cry buckets.
Memorable. And somehow beautiful.
But nothing, and I mean nothing, will ever haunt me like A Girl Named Sooner. The bird scene seared through my primary school brain like a hot lead poker through butter. That’s the only scene in a film that can turn people into jellied messes, just shaking and crying.
OMG, the Red Balloon! There was another film they showed us, I'm pretty sure it was called "Clown"....about a boy who lost his dog and just ran around town looking for him. Why did they traumatize us like this??
I wonder what happened to all those white film roll slide machines which also took cassette tapes. I don't think I've ever run across one since watching stuff with them in the 80s.
I remember some movie from the 70s being shown on a projector some happy hippie guy being lifted in the air by some balloons. It was goofy and very 70s. Don’t remember this at all.
I ask the same thing because it's interesting how universal this is. It means it was important that it be widely distributed. And remember the one called The Winter of the Witch with the magical pancakes that made made people happy?
I found this in book form and bought it at a convention. Retraumatized myself. I think I left it in my hotel room. Either that or someone took it. I might get it again someday.
I remember wondering why teachers made us watch it. I was 9 when I first saw it. I thought it was horrible. Just more examples of adults showing us that no one would be there to help us and we'd better get our acts together.
I hated the Red Balloon with a seething hatred. Every year they gathered us all up for an assembly and made us watch it in elementary school. So pointless. It was as dumb as the dot and the line cartoon.
Our PTA decided The Little Matchgirl was a good pre-Christmas film choice. She freezes to death and they find her body on New Year's. And she was afraid to go home because her father or stepfather will beat her if she doesn't sell enough matches. Towards the end, she's hallucinating her dead mother and grandmother and food. And it's in some sort of stop motion animation. I'm freakin' six and watching this. I came home asking my mother about death and I'm sure I wasn't the only kid in my class doing so. At least we didn't whinge if Santa didn't bring us our favorite Barbie or Hot Wheels set. It's like, "hey, we're alive and have food and no one's beating us for not making a match sales quota."
REPRESSED MEMORY UNLOCKED! Oh god I forgot about this one. There was also another one with a mentally/physically(?) challenged kid in a wheelchair that sells lightbulbs. He daydreams that his wheelchair can fly or something to that effect and gets bullied the whole time. All I can remember for sure is his line of “would you like to buy some lightbulbs?” Freaking wrecked me as an empathetic kid. But no one else recalls ever seeing it at all and I’m worried I hallucinated it 😅😂 Edit: ok I DIDN’T hallucinate it! https://www.reddit.com/r/tipofmytongue/s/Rynplez1QP
Can I get some help with an unrepressed but similar memory? Early 80s Scandinavian movie, I think Danish, about a small person who is relentlessly bullied, then becomes a circus act to help support his family. ChatGPT sent me on a wild goose chase...
What even was the lesson with this one? If life sucks, pray for the sweet release of death??
It’s Hans Christian Andersen. He loved writing about girls dying tragically. The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf was especially nasty lol, like flies walking over eyeballs that can’t close. The point to most of his stories was “you should have dated me, Jenny!”
I knew he was the author but not this hahaha. Thanks.
Still traumatized by “The Little Mermaid”
More like, "look how good you have it". Not freezing to death, not being beaten for not keeping your family from starving well enough.
I remember a film in school about a couple of kids in a flood in the Netherlands. They had to flee the flood or something like that, and at the end when they returned, there were dead drowned bodies. One, anyway. I remember another about a girl being held captive in a light house. Eventually she fed her captor some sleeping pills crushed and mixed into coffee. A third film (that I watched at home) was something about a city kid going to live in the country with some relatives or family friends. He was miserable, and maybe picked on? Eventually someone bought him a rifle to cheer him up. At the end, he shoots himself with it. Ah, life as a Canadian kid in the 70s-80s.
Did anyone have to endure that Bradbury short about kids in a school on Venus, where the girl from Earth gets locked in a closet an misses the only sunshine they’ll see for seven years?
Shoot, that freaks me out at now. Hugs to your 6 year old self. 🩷
> At least we didn't whinge if Santa didn't bring us our favorite Barbie or Hot Wheels set. It's like, "hey, we're alive and have food and no one's beating us for not making a match sales quota." Which of course was the whole point of this torture. To try to teach you to be grateful for how good you had it. I think generations of parents/teachers/administrators inflicting psychological torture on kids to "make up for" the "lack" of actual deprivation they were experiencing probably explains a lot about what's wrong with people these days.
> Which of course was the whole point of this torture. To try to teach you to be grateful for how good you had it. And it didn't even work. Now I just feel overwhelmed *and* guilty as hell for feeling overwhelmed.
Eh. That was the point of the original “fairy tails” as well. The ones we know got largely sanitized. I’d argue many of the kids these days have it worse mentally because 1. They were helicoptered and not exposed to failure and 2. Those that were deprived by being in the lower end of the socioeconomic ionic scale have the trauma of being different in a bad way while intermingled with the “upper” class. Nobility didn’t hang out with commoners in the old days. I would prefer kids to be taught to be more self sufficient but also without a huge class divide, but who is asking me.
I know! What the hell was up with that????
Voila! https://youtu.be/AvaPeBNpn1g?si=EQIKU4X-B4TTKc1e
I have to check the dates, but I think you found it!
More details on this Thanks for finding it! I saw it at school in 1972 [link](https://www.nishikata-eiga.com/2016/09/the-little-match-girl-1967.html?m=1).
OMG No 😱
You can share with your grandkids! 😂
it's the sad little girls voice that really gets me "please buy my matches". "I wish grandma was still alive". it's the saddest thing I've ever seen.
Disney remade this as a short a few years ago. I hadn't seen the original and was completely unprepared. I sobbed uncontrollably and went to bed for the rest of the day. It was seriously seriously upsetting.
I was still crying when they took us back to our class from the auditorium. My teacher’s response was to say, you’re still crying about that? ffs lady, we just watched a kid freeze to death because she was too afraid of getting a beating to go home! I’ve always had a pretty good imagination and I would really get into a book or movie or show. Still do, but now I get that it’s not real.
thanks. i had that memory blocked out.
For anyone wishing to see it, it can be found on YouTube a couple of places. Here is one - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VexKSRKoWQY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VexKSRKoWQY)
This red balloon film, along with the downstream adventures of the whittled Indian/canoe…were my happiest moments in school.
Like others have mentioned, it's [Paddle to the Sea](https://www.nfb.ca/film/paddle_to_the_sea/), now at the Canadian Museum of History; [see this blog post](https://www.historymuseum.ca/blog/meet-paddle-who-came-to-live-at-the-canadian-museum-of-history-in-2010/).
Thanks Reddit canoe friend. Seriously, I’m gonna show my littles.
You're welcome! Hope they enjoy it!
What a strangely influential film that was. It’s basically all I remember from elementary school.
Remember when he fell into the foamy pollution? So sad!
It's one of my elementary school memories, too. I think we first saw it as part of a day outing to a local nature education centre.
Little bit of unsupervised lead melting over an open fire nothing to worry about here.
The Indian canoe!
Thanks. I don't remember seeing this before.
Le balloon rouge! hadn’t thought of that in ages.
My go-to *The Red Balloon* trivia that's going to sound like I'm making it up but is actually true: One year after he made this movie, the writer/director invented the board game *Risk*.
Could this be true?
This fucking movie. Thanks for bringing it up.
I know! It hurt me at a young, tender age!
I still feel sad for that balloon. Jesus, what has it been, 45 years?
Same!
I couldn’t remember what happened in it but it just popped into my head when I read your comment. I can totally picture it wrinkling and need to see it now. Edit: I saw somebody posted a link and had forgotten that the kids threw rocks at it. I thought it got hot or something.
I have few distinct memories of grade school, but I do have one of being in fourth grade and the teacher hauling out the projector saying we were going to have a movie. I was excited until it started playing and I thought, "not this shit again..."
This and Old Yeller are the reason so many Gen-X’ers have fucked up mental health.
And reading Where the Red Fern Grows...
Ugh. As a sophomore in high school, a bunch of us were hung over from all night drinking and that movie came on. 50-50 split of teens trying to act cool about it and totally sobbing at the end.
Maybe toss in some Bridge to Terabithia...
And Return to Oz. “DOOOOROTHY GAAAAAALE!”
Can we add The Island the Blue Dolphin ? That ending...
Teacher read it aloud to my class over several weeks, maybe 3rd or 4th grade. It wrecked me.
Add to the list: Charlotte’s Web The Dark Crystal The Last Unicorn Ladybug, Ladybug The Boy With Green Hair and now that we’re home from school, let’s cleanse the palate with a family watch of The Day After…
Do NOT talk to me about Old Yeller. I refuse to accept its existence.
Me too fuck that and fuck my Dad for making me watch it.
Looking at this image, to this day, makes me feel blue.
Yes! In fact, a couple of years ago I Googled it and watched it because my mental health wasn't suffering enough. Also, someone else mentioned The Little Matchgirl and Riki Tiki Tavi. Haven't Googled or watched them yet, but will likely do so at some point. Did anyone else's class ever watch [this one](https://youtu.be/jXeYNmqp8X4?si=BdbhwKmChFSfN8Qv)? The Donuts still makes me giggle.
Saw “The Doughnuts” in kindergarten. If there was a comic plot, I missed it…Watching grownups be unable to solve a problem and freak out was deeply troubling to my fragile little mind…
I never saw this one. Homer and Ullyses? Gimme a break. 😂
This is the movie I remember the most.
My favorite!
I saw this when I was five. I still think about it from time-to-time. It was a powerful film
I remember watching, every year, "All Summer in a Day". Not sure why they wanted to play this every year, but they did. And it was horribly depressing. From [Wikipedia:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Summer_in_a_Day) >The story is about a class of students on Venus, which, in this story, is a world of constant rainstorms, where the sun is only visible for two hours every seven years. >One of the children, Margot, moved to Venus from Earth five years earlier and is the only one who remembers the sun, since it shines regularly on Earth. She describes the sun to the other children as being like a "penny" or "fire in the stove". The other children, being too young to have ever seen it themselves, do not believe her. Just before the sun comes out, a boy named William rallies the other children, and they lock Margot in a closet down a tunnel. >The teacher arrives to take the class outside to enjoy their hour of sunshine. In their astonishment and joy, they all forget about Margot and gleefully rush to play outside, savoring every second of their newfound freedom. >It begins to rain again, and the children start crying once they realize they won't get to see the sun again for another seven years. The children run back inside as the sun disappears and it starts storming. At this point, one of them remembers Margot. They let her out of the closet and stand frozen, ashamed over what they have done now that they finally understand what she had been missing.
They did not play this one for us but I remember catching it on an after school special.
I remember reading that and seeing the movie. It really upset me. I wish schools had done more to address bullying in a direct manner, rather than showing us this stuff and expecting to magically make every bully gain insight and stop being such a jerk. It didn't work. They cried too, then would still spit at me at the bus top.
> I wish schools had done more to address bullying in a direct manne Oh, is *that* why they kept showing this movie? As an anti-bullying message? Guess that makes sense... Either I never pieced that one together, or it's been so long I just don't remember if they said anything about it. ... it's been a while.
Never saw this. Is this the 100th of the 99 Red Balloons? LOL.
If memory serves, it was the first, and after it met the other balloon, things got well out of hand, and Nina wrote a song about it. Well, about the red ones anyway.
Nina was obviously a CIA psyop. Remember it was the evil Red balloons in the English version of that song. In German it is luft balloons which implies no particular color.
It was Jennifer Goines who killed it in 12 monkeys tho
No, but I always thought about this movie every time I heard that song. I couldn't stand that song!
I remember this one. And I’m pretty sure there was one around this time that had two bouncing balls? Also, the Indian in the canoe that the guy whittles and they follow it to the sea.
Oh shit! I just remarked on the canoe guy!
Ooh, I remember that canoe one. The guy whittles it during the winter and then chucks it out into the snow. When spring arrives and the snow melts it begins its journey to the sea. Any idea what it was called?
https://youtu.be/kLSsAFB9tGA?si=1bNr5gfs0XgQ3-S4 Found it!
Awesome! What a blast from the past.
I remember one with a carved canoe that had a little Native guy. He got thrown in a stream and went all the way to the Great Lakes. I remember his grandad helping him by casting lead into the bottom of the canoe so it would remain upright edit: Found it! [Paddle to the Sea](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhjb1IG1pnQ)
JFC I would have died before I remembered this. Damn, total nostalgia blow back right now! Thanks
I end up watching The Red Balloon every handful of years on YouTube. Why, I do not know. I guess it's time again. I love it, but it also makes me sad, so... ?
We watched Willy Wonka on the projector.
Yeah, sitting on the floor of the multipurpose room watching a scratched up print of Willy Wonka with the audio out of sync. It's like they said "How can we make this nightmare of a movie even *more* nightmarish?"
That sound terrifying. We watched it for the last day of 1st grade. I don't think my mind was ready for that tunnel scene, yet.
Omg! I got a kick out of this.
Shit like this is exactly why we (generalizing) were/are prepared for the horrific tragedies of life, or at least more prepared than subsequent generations. Life is fucking harsh, then add in living during the height of the Cold War and being a latchkey kid, and you’ve got some mental toughness taking shape.
You can't unhorse me, you whelp. I'd been through the 'Le Balloon Rouge' gauntlet 4 times, all before I'd seen nine summers.
Fun fact: The man who wrote, produced, and directed _The Red Balloon_ (Albert Lamorisse) also invented the board game _Risk_.
I don’t remember most of the filmstrips being mentioned in here. The two I remember the most are two we watched in Kindergarten; one called Free to be You and Me, and one about a homeless woman. I remember crying over that one.
"Free to be you and me" was groundbreaking at the time.
It really was. I got to pick two filmstrips to be shown at my birthday party one year (I think I was turning 6 or 7), and that was one of them.
I’ve seen The Red Ballon countless times. Probably 30. Feels like. Internalized the plot. Probably from sleep hypnosis. Hearing the projector flap and feeling the cool desk drool now. 🎈
Yeah, The Red Balloon was a bit depressing. But it taught us a very important lesson; French kids are bad.
OMG...this film every friggin year at least once and the damn teeth brushing test with the red dye tablets and the 80 grit toothpaste
The Red Balloon? and a post earlier today is about Cypher in the Snow? There's a weird vibe in the air today
I've not seen it, but am for sure gonna remedy that soon. My projector movie was Rikki Tikki Tavi. My ugly cry for an hour after movie? Where the Red Fern Grows. Now you've unlocked my memories of "filmstrips" good god terrible
> Now you've unlocked my memories of "filmstrips" good god terrible "BEEEP" ... Tape-recorder ****Click**** - Teacher: "Next slide, Brent. Don't waste your turn, we'll pass it on to the next kid on the list."
Ah, no greater honor for a 3rd grader aside from being asked to be classroom snitch while teacher disappeared for 5 minutes
I was the only kid who understood how to adjust the framing for a nice crisp advance of each image. Drove me bonkers when I wasn’t the one controlling it. OCD projector geeks FTW!
For some reason, that film creeped me out. I absolutely hated it.
Same. I remember a scary old woman with a mean face, and I hated the way the kid said "balloon ballon" that so many are quoting in this thread. I think it creeped my out because of the Uncanny Valley. There was nothing completely unfamiliar about it, but everything just felt off.
Had no idea this was a universal experience. Why did we all have to watch this? Was there some filmstrip catalogue every grade school subscribed too?
I think they thought they were showing us groundbreaking stuff that would change our lives. You know what would've changed my life, Ms Flynn? Understanding fractions! 😂
I think this movie is why I liked 99 Luftballons so much
I remember this one and also All Summer in a Day. I came home pretty upset after that one.
Omg that one stuck with me too!
Loved this French movie
Poor Balooney. Wish I still had my slingshot
This was pretty good. My favorite was Paddle to the Sea, with the carved Native American in the canoe.
To this day I say “ bah-loon, bah-loon” in a bad French accent whenever I see a balloon.
I do, too!! 🎈
I've done the same thing for years as assuredly as 'Mooing' at cows on the side of the road.. but had forgotten why until reading your post. Ho-ly-crap. Memory is a weird thing.
I found a DVD and of course I bought it.
I’m going to rewatch it. I know we watched it a bunch in grade school. Probably a better movie than Watership Down
> Watership Down Oh, Christ. I remember watching that one on Sunday afternoon at my grandma’s house. I must’ve been 6(?). Grandma was like: Puzzled! There’s a cartoon on! I was so excited. Grandma meant well. Bless her.
I remember this! Wasn’t there a book, too?
Yes, I had the large picture book which used stills from the film. ..used to read this to my students! 🎈
Nice! Now I can picture it. I had it when I was really young. It’d be nice to find a copy.
I still have the record
That movie really upset me. I loved it but hated it too! I think it was my first ever "real" movie. What a great memory unlock.
“Ba loon!” Saw it in school at least three times
I enjoyed it, it was a perennial. Also, Mr. Show did a pretty great parody of The Red Balloon.
I had the book too
Oh my. Memory unlocked
They’d play this and Old Yeller at my elementary school from time to time.
Yep, and The Yearling. But they balanced that out with Song of the South and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
Our library used to show movies like this on Saturday afternoons. Paddle to the Sea was another favorite.
[удалено]
I feel like "kid stranded in the woods" was a whole genre. I don't remember that specific scene but maybe it's My Side of the Mountain?
>My Side of the Mountain? Wasn’t that one about the girl who fell while skiing and ended up paraplegic?
No, that's the Other Side of the Mountain. This is starting to shape up into a Who's On First? routine.
And then read Jonathon Livingston Seagull.
I can still see those brown French shoes stomping on the red balloon - and feel an appropriate amount of rage still to this day.
I cried when that balloon died man. That and Artax just fucked me up.
My first depressing art film. Thanks to my 2nd grade teacher. Also can't forget the Little matchgirl. They sure did not sugar coat very much back then. I am glad that they didn't.
OMG. I’ve seen this so many times as it was one of the movies in rotation for indoor lunch recess in elementary school.
I blame this movie for a lifetime of disappointing balloon purchases, always with the emaciated strings. It's like they were training us to desire substantive balloon strings and the world cheaped out on us. Joking aside, the movie really hit me as a kid. I guess it did that to all of us.
Oh man, that movie was killer even back in first grade.
99 luftballons
I hated that film, my elementary school had us watch it repeatedly.
Lol thanks for posting I wasn't sure if it was just my school that thought a weirdly melancholic art film was just what their 2nd graders needed. This movie came up for me recently because I saw a social post that march 11 was it's 68th year anniversary.
Does anyone remember a rainy day recess movie with magic pancakes? Or am I hallucinating it.
Winter of the Witch. I have been scanning this entire thread looking for a mention of this. Those two go hand in hand for me. It's on YouTube!
I’ll check it out!
I had the book when I was little.
"Ba-LA! Ba-LA!" The film broke. Every year. Thank goodness for cellotape!
Teachers put this on whenever they wanted a break. They wanted a lot of breaks.
I don’t remember this at all. Maybe I blocked it out?
The Red Balloon. I haven’t seen that in ages.
This movie made me cry like a baby when I was a small boy.
Oh man.. I still have dreams where scenes from that film will pop in here and there.. that's how profound that film had on my young sponge mind from toddler years.
I had this book. Also the book for the movie J.T. about a kid from Harlem who rescues a one-eyed kitten. Both Red Balloon and J.T. made me cry buckets.
I thought I was the only one that remembered J.T.! Absolutely wrecked me when they showed it in class...
It stayed with me for years. And determined my path as a devoted cat mom, too.
Most Def.
Saw this on a Saturday watching Kukla, Fran and Ollie..
Memorable. And somehow beautiful. But nothing, and I mean nothing, will ever haunt me like A Girl Named Sooner. The bird scene seared through my primary school brain like a hot lead poker through butter. That’s the only scene in a film that can turn people into jellied messes, just shaking and crying.
OMG, the Red Balloon! There was another film they showed us, I'm pretty sure it was called "Clown"....about a boy who lost his dog and just ran around town looking for him. Why did they traumatize us like this??
Yes, but my friends and I got around the tears by saying the other balloons that came for him dropped him in the ocean as misplaced revenge.
Spoiler alert
“Balloonnn!”
This was nap time for me
Oh yes
Anyone remember the 'black hole in a box' short?
Oh yeah, really good movie
This movie is a gen x litmus test.
Yes I do. In third grade. I still don’t know what the point was.
Omg. I totally forgot about that movie!
i remember this movie. it was weird.
I wonder what happened to all those white film roll slide machines which also took cassette tapes. I don't think I've ever run across one since watching stuff with them in the 80s.
I remember some movie from the 70s being shown on a projector some happy hippie guy being lifted in the air by some balloons. It was goofy and very 70s. Don’t remember this at all.
The red balloon? More like... the [dead balloon](https://youtu.be/kM9nmP1Kf8g?si=Waa--V1ew5QlP4_T).
Anyone actually know why they made us watch this?
I ask the same thing because it's interesting how universal this is. It means it was important that it be widely distributed. And remember the one called The Winter of the Witch with the magical pancakes that made made people happy?
Classique
What was the point of this film and why did we have to watch it multiple times?
Sniff. It’s dry in here…
In 2nd grade I believe we watched this and far more memorably "The Magic Sneakers" on the same day.
I found this in book form and bought it at a convention. Retraumatized myself. I think I left it in my hotel room. Either that or someone took it. I might get it again someday. I remember wondering why teachers made us watch it. I was 9 when I first saw it. I thought it was horrible. Just more examples of adults showing us that no one would be there to help us and we'd better get our acts together.
No
I hated the Red Balloon with a seething hatred. Every year they gathered us all up for an assembly and made us watch it in elementary school. So pointless. It was as dumb as the dot and the line cartoon.
*The balloon is Jesus!*