WSCC Humankind Series
Overcoming loneliness: Togetherness, connection, Community
Humankind is WSCC’s arts and culture lecture series. The series consists of lectures, presentations, workshops, art exhibitions, film series, and much more.
This film series is part of the 8th year of West Shore Community College’s Humankind Series , focused on the theme, “Overcoming Loneliness: Togetherness, Connection, Community.” This theme explores ways we can address what the US Surgeon General has diagnosed as an epidemic of loneliness in our society today. Accordingly, the films will each speak to the problem of loneliness and ways to overcome it from different perspectives.
Sponsored by West Shore Community College – Humankind films are free to the public!
Play Video
December 13th @ 7pm
The Holdovers
R
2023 ‧ Comedy/Drama ‧ 2h 13m
A curmudgeonly instructor at a New England prep school remains on campus during Christmas break to babysit a handful of students with nowhere to go. He soon forms an unlikely bond with a brainy but damaged troublemaker, and with the school’s head cook, a woman who just lost a son in the Vietnam War.
Play Video
January 13th @ 7pm
A Man Called Ove
PG-13
2015 ‧ Comedy/Romance ‧ 1h 56m
Ove (Rolf Lassgård) is the quintessential angry old man next door. An isolated retiree with strict principles and a short fuse, who spends his days enforcing block association rules that only he cares about, and visiting his wife’s grave, Ove has given up on life. After a boisterous young family moves in next door and accidentally flattens Ove’s mailbox, an unlikely friendship forms.
Play Video
January 14th @ 7pm
A Man Called Otto
PG-13
2022 ‧ Comedy/Drama ‧ 2h 6m
When a lively young family moves in next door, grumpy widower Otto Anderson meets his match in a quick-witted, pregnant woman named Marisol, leading to an unlikely friendship that turns his world upside down.
Play Video
February 10th @ 7pm
Lars and the Real Girl
PG-13
2007 ‧ Comedy/Romance ‧ 1h 46m
Extremely shy Lars (Ryan Gosling) finds it impossible to make friends or socialize. His brother (Paul Schneider) and sister-in-law (Emily Mortimer) worry about him, so when he announces that he has a girlfriend he met on the Internet, they are overjoyed. But Lars’ new lady is a life-size plastic woman. On the advice of a doctor (Patricia Clarkson), his family and the rest of the community go along with his delusion.
Play Video
March 12th @ 10am & 7pm
Good Will Hunting
R
1997 ‧ Romance/Drama ‧ 2h 6m
Will Hunting (Matt Damon) has a genius-level IQ but chooses to work as a janitor at MIT. When he solves a difficult graduate-level math problem, his talents are discovered by Professor Gerald Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgard), who decides to help the misguided youth reach his potential. When Will is arrested for attacking a police officer, Professor Lambeau makes a deal to get leniency for him if he will get treatment from therapist Sean Maguire (Robin Williams).
Play Video
April 11th @ 7pm
Spirited Away
PG
2001 ‧ Fantasy/Adventure ‧ 2h 15m
In this animated feature by noted Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki, 10-year-old Chihiro (Rumi Hiiragi) and her parents (Takashi Naitô, Yasuko Sawaguchi) stumble upon a seemingly abandoned amusement park. After her mother and father are turned into giant pigs, Chihiro meets the mysterious Haku (Miyu Irino), who explains that the park is a resort for supernatural beings who need a break from their time spent in the earthly realm, and that she must work there to free herself and her parents.
