Artists Space

The Wolf Man

Postponed: Film Screening
March 12, 2020, 7pm

Due to concerns about the spread of COVID-19, Artists Space and Light Industry will be rescheduling all programs related to A Film Club for Adrienne Kennedy.

Cow-Cow Boogie, performed by Dorothy Dandridge (Josef Berne, 1942, 3 mins)
The Wolf Man (George Waggner, 1941, 71 mins)

Dorothy Dandridge forged a new model for black stardom in Hollywood, and Kennedy describes how, as a young woman, she "yearned to look like her—perhaps to be her." This program begins with a soundie—one of the precursors to the music video—centered around Dandridge. Kennedy was also entranced by the horror films of her youth: "zombies, mummies, the Cat Woman, ghouls, ghosts, vampires, monsters, werewolves...and Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney (the single most frightening movie monster), the Wolf Man." This last title, its vision of lycanthropy, proved especially significant. "Because of the Wolf Man I asked my mother many questions about what would happen to 'a person' while sleeping," Kennedy explains. "And I asked her these questions for a long time. The Wolf Man held a power over me. Metamorphosis and that change of identity would, twenty years later, become a theme that would dominate my writing. The characters in my plays and stories would also change personae at an alarming rate."

The Wolf Man is screened at Artists Space as part of A Film Club for Adrienne Kennedy, presented in partnership with Light Industry.

A black and white image captures the dark silhouette of trees shrouded with thick fog. In the center stands a man with wolf-like features, grimacing over a woman who is seemingly unconscious in his arms. Her body is arced back, supported by the wolf man
Still from The Wolf Man, 1941. [A black and white image captures the dark silhouette of trees shrouded with thick fog. In the center stands a man with wolf-like features, grimacing over a woman who is seemingly unconscious in his arms. Her body is arced back, supported by the wolf man's arm under her shoulders and around her waist.]