In the early 1930s, colonial propaganda in Parisian schools turned to the cinema to perpetuate its discourse. The “Cinémathèque de la Ville de Paris” was asked to play a part in the implementation of this policy in order to instill patriotic fervor in the younger generation. This mission continued beyond the festivities for the Algerian centenial, with the projection of two films by a colonial administrator, Alfred Chaumel. Following the presentation of La symphonie exotique and Réveil d’une race, the 5 000 young film-goers at the Gaumont Palace were asked to write on and make drawings of what they saw. The best contributions were honored with a prize by the Société Française de l’Art à l’école. Several of these works were published and analyzed in Cinédocument, a review dedicated to the cinema as educational tool, edited by the Cinématheque. These fragments are a valuable historical resource on the reception of these film documents and give some indication of the influence and scope of colonial culture amongst young people who two decades later were to affront the break-up of the French Empire.