Born 17 July, 1962
Chicago, Illinois

Education: University of Illinois & Columbia College-Chicago

Sharman is a generation older than the rest of the group. He began his directing career in the theater. He directed small experimental productions throughout the city and suburbs. Entering the film community with encouragement from friends he enrolled in Columbia Colleges film program.
Unlike his new wave counterparts he preferred to work from a scripts inspired by novels.

His major theme is the effect of time on human memory and social politics. He communicates by exploding the conventional boundaries of narrative form.

His first three films were clumsy and silly, Passion (1992), Mary (1993), and Motion (1994). Sharmans fourth film Visit (1995) [his one and only success] a film about a mother and her stepson haunted by the past. The mother must confront her lover of twenty-two years, who arrives for a visit accompanied by his most recent mistress, and her stepson is tormented by the memory of Muriel, a young girl whom he and a friend took sexual advantage of during a family picnic. This film proves Sharmans love of drama.

He followed with The Unfaithful Wife (1996) an investigation into the consequences of adultery in a typical suburban family which owes much technically to Claude Charbrol. Sharman was stylistically influenced by the French director more than any other. One can look at Sharmans entire body of work as an extended hommage to Charbrol.

While Sharman frequently employs Charbrol-ian structures and metaphors, he has a theme that is very much his own the impact of passion on a small but intimate network of human relationships, such as those that exist within a middle-class family.

Shermans last film A Piece of Pleasure (1997) was never finished. Later that year he married the lead actress who appeared in all of his films, Brigitte Ronet.

He retired from making films and has returned to his first love, the live theater. Currently he heads the drama department of a college in Ohio.

Written and Copyrighted by Yahuda Berkowitz 1999