William Wolf, the noted critic, author, educator and lecturer, will launch the fall season of William Wolf Movie Previews, his popular course offering pre-release private screenings and critical discussions of new feature films, on Saturday, October 18, 2008, under the auspices of New York University's School of Continuing and Professional Studies, Department of Design, Digital Arts and Film.
During the fall course, seven films selected by Professor Wolf, will be screened for members of his class before they are released to the public, in the luxurious state-of-the-art Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center. Each private screening will be followed immediately by critical discussion led by Professor Wolf, with an occasional guest.
Class participants critique films before reviews appear, allowing original insights and independent, spirited analysis. The screenings will take place on Saturdays at 10:00 AM on the following dates: October 18, 25, November 1, 8, 15, and December 6, 13. The Walter Reade Theater is located at 165 West 65th Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.
To register, visit www.scps.nyu.edu or telephone 212/998-7171. The course number is X34.9507. The cost is $275 (plus registration fee).
Some recent films Professor Wolf has previewed in this course include: The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, La Vie en Rose, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Little Miss Sunshine and Pan's Labyrinth.
William Wolf has been associated with NYU for more than 25 years. He has written for
New York Magazine, Cue, the Gannett newspaper chain, and other leading publications. He is the author, with Lillian Kramer Wolf, of Landmark Films: The Cinema and Our Century and The
Marx Brothers. He has contributed chapters on "Easy Rider" and "Duck Soup" to The A List: 100 Essential Films, a collection of reviews by members of the National Society of Film Critics, and "The Eroticism of Words" and "Kinsey" chapters in the National Society's sequel, The X List.
Professor Wolf served two terms as Chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle, and is a member of the National Society of Film Critics and the Online Film Critics Society. He also belongs to P.E.N., the American Theatre Critics Association, the International Association of Theatre Critics, and the American Association of University Professors. He is President of the Drama Desk, an organization of critics and writers on the theater, and served for two years on the nominating committee for the Drama Desk Awards. To read Professor Wolf's film and theater reviews, go to
www.wolfentertainmentguide.com.
During the course of his career, Professor Wolf has interviewed hundreds of film and theater notables and has covered the world's major film festivals. Among the many he has interviewed are
Ingmar Bergman and
Charlie Chaplin. Audio tapes of his interviews with directors, actors, producers and others in the worlds of cinema and the stage constitute the
William Wolf Film and Theater Interview Collection (1972-1998), part of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound, that he has donated to the New York Library of the Performing Arts.
Professor Wolf resides in New York City with his wife, Lillian Kramer Wolf, a real estate broker with Prudential Douglas Elliman, and is the father of two daughters, Julie Wolf Pursey, an economics journalist based in France, and Karen Wolf Schmid, a university professor of early childhood education in Athens, Greece.
Photo Credit Ben Strothmann
