The Triumphant Night When a Teacher Saved His Students from a Motorcycle Gang: A True, Hand-Animated Story

“Survival of the fittest, this still exists even today. If you’re weak, people pick on you, they take advantage. And if you don’t respond to what they do, they will continually pick on you. You have to frighten them and attack first.”

Those strong words come from Ralph Whims, a teacher who, one night back in 1973, agreed to chaperone a school dance in a church basement. It was a pretty ordinary affair, until a 20-member biker gang barged in, uninvited, and started harassing the kids. What to do? Retreat? Or step forward and restore order? That’s the story, apparently all true, told by the short animation, The Chaperone, created by Fraser Munden. (His own father once had Ralph Whims as an elementary school teacher in Montreal.) This empowering short film has been screened at 70 film festivals and won 25 awards. You can get more backstory on the film by reading an interview with the director here.

The Chaperone will be added to the Animation section of our collection, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns, Documentaries & More.

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Related Content:

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.