Childhood memories -- the good kind.

[janradder]

When I was in grade school, one of the most exciting days in the school year was when the teacher wheeled the film projector down the hall from the library and told us that it was a movie day. We'd pull our desks or tables away from the center of the room to make a large space on the floor. Then, after the teacher had pulled down the screen in front of the blackboard, she'd turn off the lights and we'd gather on the floor.

Under the flicker of the projector, I sat mesmerized by the antics of Uncle Smiley or some nature film about the desert. The best film of them all, though, had to be Paddle to the Sea. Each year, starting in second grade, we'd watch it at least once and sometimes twice, if we were lucky.

I loved watching the boy carve out his toy canoe and carefully paint it, then send it down a stream with the instructionswritten carefully on the bottom to put put the canoe back in the water so that it could reach the sea should anyone happen to find it. And though the wooden Indian in the canoe remained expressionless throughout the entire film, his face seemed to change as he reached each new point on his journey to the ocean.

Today, I found a site dedicated to the book and movie. I'd always thought that the movie was a true story -- that some Indian boy who lived far from the sea really had carved this beautiful little boat and figure and sent him on a journey to the ocean so that, even though the boy could never see what it looked like, his wooden figure could. Apparently, though, I was wrong. Still, if you go to the website, there is a link where you can download the film for free (as well as read the book online or order it and the film). So, for those of you who also remember Paddle to the Sea, enjoy!

Comments

[vee-ecks.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I loved that one at the school or library, too. Also My Side of the Mountain - I kind of connect the two in my head.

When I was eleven, we moved to Hawaii to join this church/commune, a singularly stellar feature of which was that the community showed free 16mm movies on Saturday night. I went up and introduced myself to the guy who ran it, the first time I went, and he recognized a fellow geek, I guess. I ended up helping him run it for a year or so - ordering movies, running and maintaining the projector, etc. It was a lot of fun - we were required to show a certain amount of religious material, but really only cared about old movies and were on a very limited budget, so we just ordered the cheapest religious crap we could. We'd show hilarious old Adventist screeds about how if you have alcohol in your house it'll kill your kids, then the real movie.

That was one of the best things that ever happened to me in my life.

[janradder.livejournal.com]

I never saw My Side of the Mountain but I had the book (which I also never read, but I'd skim through it and look at all the diagrams and the tools list and wish that I was somewhere other than Cheshire, CT, living on my own).

I kind of miss how different organizations and public institutions used to show free 16mm movies. I saw a lot of old Laurel and Hardy films that way. I remember once, when my father was with the JayCees, my parents checked out a projector and a bunch of films from the library for an Easter party the organization was putting on. Mostly it was a bunch of Mighty Mouse and Heckyl and Jeckyl cartoons along with a few silent shorts and after the party, we took them home with us and set the projector up in our living room to watch them again. There was something really neat about threading the film through the projector and making sure the loop was big enough and then listening to the projector running and seeing that light flickering that was really captivating to me. It felt like there was this personal connection to the film you were watching because you had to go through so much effort just to watch it. Anyway, I think it's part of why I became a big film fan. I don't know why, but there's definitely something about film equipment -- whether it's projectors or cameras or lights -- that really attracts fellow geeks.

[vee-ecks.livejournal.com]

I dunno. I miss it, too, but I also remember watching a lot of anamorphic widescreen movies at libraries and schools that couldn't afford the appropriate lens, so the movies ended up all smooshed and tall. I first saw most of the Planet of the Apes movies that way, actually.

[janradder.livejournal.com]

I remember seeing movies like that as well, but I just thought that it was how they were made. It wasn't until years later that I finally found out that the picture was being squeezed.

[vee-ecks.livejournal.com]

Oh, I asked what was going on the first time it happened.

[janradder.livejournal.com]

I was generally pretty clueless as a kid. And if there was anything that seemed strange or out of place or just didn't make sense, my first assumption was always that everyone else got it and it was just me who couldn't figure it out. Which, I realize now, usually wasn't the case.

[vee-ecks.livejournal.com]

Oh, and there's a thriving 16mm geek scene, BTW. When I was living in Silicon Valley several years back, there was this one guy who had a massive collection of old educational and industrial films and did movie nights at a bar in San Jose. It was pretty cool.

[janradder.livejournal.com]

Some of those old educational films are pretty entertaining.

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

I LOVED My Side of the Mountain!

The book. I didn't know there was a movie until this very moment.

[vee-ecks.livejournal.com]

Yep. It's not as good as the book, and has a significantly different ending, but it's still pretty cool.

[silk-noir.livejournal.com]

Holling C. Holling has always been amazing. Have you looked into his other books?

[janradder.livejournal.com]

No, and I''d actually not even known that Paddle to the Sea was originally a book until I was an adult. I still haven't read the book. I take it's worth reading?