Experiences that Change Us - Movie Month at LCS

On Monday morning, Ms. Kee opened Chapel with an exciting declaration that the month of March would be Movie Month!

For LCS, we are roughly at at the one-year mark of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our school community. We each have had so many new and different experiences to reflect on, and for some, there may be many reasons to feel low. It has been a strange and tough year and we are lucky to have a strong community of support to help us find joy and get through challenging times together. Last week, we were delighted to host several classic LCS spirit events that truly lifted the moods of our students and staff and brought us closer together. Following this week of fun events, Ms. Kee announced a fun community challenge to continue to boost our spirits throughout the March: The Movie Month challenge, with a theme for each week. 

“So here we are…March is not known for having the best weather. March is also not exactly known for being a great month at the best of times, never mind in a pandemic. So we need our coping strategies now more than ever. This morning I want to talk about a strategy for staying positive during tough times: watching movies.” 

Ms. Kee reflected on a movie that she recently watched that changed her: Minari, a Golden Globe Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film that inspired the theme for this week’s Movie Month challenge: “This Movie Changed Me”. This month, students are encouraged to spend time with their house families and watch a powerful movie together that makes them pause and reflect. 

“Watching movies at home, by ourselves, with friends in your houses, or with friends on Zoom [...] gives us time to grieve, to hope, and to keep ourselves laughing. The simple act of watching stories unfold on our screens allows us to enter a different world. Movies have the power to unearth the many layers of identities. To help us answer the most important question: ‘who am I?’” - Ms. Kee

Ms. Kee quoted Roger Ebert on the power of filmmaking as an art medium that can help shape us. Ebert said, “Movies are the most powerful empathy machine in all the arts. When I go to a great movie I can live somebody else's life for a while. I can walk in somebody else's shoes. I can see what it feels like to be a member of a different gender, a different race, a different economic class, to live in a different time, to have a different belief. The great movies enlarge us, they civilize us, they make us more decent people.”

Since this event is community-driven, students have been provided the bonus incentive of a supply of snacks for all houses that watch their chosen movie together!

This week, our students have elected to watch the following movies “that changed me,” by house group:: 

Lower Colebrook House – Interstellar

Grove House – Legally Blonde and Good Will Hunting

Cooper House – Soul

Ondaatje House – Beautiful Boy, Parasite, Forrest Gump and The Blind Side

Upper Colebrook House – Hamilton

Moodie House – Crazy Rich Asians

Matthews House – Good Will Hunting

Memorial House – My Sister’s Keeper, Parasite, Finding Dory, Frozen, and American History X

Rashleigh House – Monster vs. Aliens

Ryder House – Star Wars: A New Hope

Uplands House – Hustlers and Pirates of the Caribbean

Wadsworth House – The Hate You Give

Stay tuned to see their film picks for next week!