AROUSAL (1998)

Produced, written and directed by

Sharon Hyman

Starring Sharon Hyman, Phillip Roth,

Kevin Segal and Naomi Levine

“Sharon Hyman's "Arousal": 5 Snowballs rating (out of five). The best possible date movie ever made. B-movie meister Sam Arkoff would have been proud. He said that: ‘Sex is the answer to an exhibitor's dreams. For the box office, I mean. You can't get an ingredient in most movies that draws better than sex. Of course, you must use it wisely’.

Hyman is wise. She should be given immediate carte blanche to do a feature. Now.

Hyman is our Woodette Allen.

Funny, controversial, gender-dividing, a performance docomedy about relationships, men, women, positive neurosis and fantasy. What more do you want?”

- Peter Wintonick, POV Magazine

“Arousal: Montreal one-woman film industry Sharon Hyman writes, directs, produces and stars in a clever, rueful and talky 35-minute video about the increasingly debilitating things women and men say to each other when they're cooped up in an apartment for too long...”

- John Griffin, Montreal Gazette

“Taking a more empirical approach to reality--

with no crew, herself as director, writer and lead actor--Arousal stakes out the intimate space of an apartment building to chart the naked truth.

Using a home video camera and a host of friends, Hyman says she was able to realize her dream of shooting an entire film  -- without ever leaving the house”.

- Annie Ilkow, Montreal Mirror

“Shot with a Hi-8 video camera, no budget, and lots of friends, Arousal could easily be overlooked at the festival. But as Hyman pointed out, ‘you get out of the festival as much as you put in’.

She added, ‘the fact that my film can be shown at a major international film festival is inspirational. It lets others know that they don't need a big budget, just a good idea and a lot of passion’.”

- Martin Siberok, The Globe and Mail

WORRIED (1996)

Produced, written and directed by

Sharon Hyman and Naomi Levine

Starring Sharon Hyman and Naomi Levine

“Worried is what feminist film-makers/improv writers/stars/sole cast members Sharon Hyman and Naomi Levine call an auto-documentary.

It’s about them! them! them!, shot by them! them! them! - and a tripod.

But because Hyman and Levine are also bright, articulate, funny, outward-looking, reasonably normal and approximately 32.5 years of age, what they have to say has broad appeal, and not simply to other women.

In the course of one tight 30-minute film, they wring hands and crack jokes over meditation, apartments, acupuncture, makeup, modeling, birthday slumber parties, personality and how to get one, home decorating, womanly chores, sex, relationships, self-esteem, male harassment, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, life, laundry, the heartbreak of improperly cleaned clothes - and worrying.

‘I worry that I worry’, says Hyman in Worried, and you recognize immediately that this woman knows her way around the topic. She makes Woody Allen look relaxed.

Mind you, Woody’s films always feature Woody’s anxieties disguised as someone else’s. Hyman and Levine are more honest. They put their insecurities where everyone can see them, and claim them as their own”.

- John Griffin, Montreal Gazette

“Worried is a short film that illuminates and resonates. In the unemphatic language of ordinary speech these two women

(filmmaker, the lovely Sharon Hyman, and her closest friend) talk about life and illuminate all its intricate complications.

The poignancy of life's large and small complications - the worries - resonates because the talk lingers in the mind after the film has ended. Superbly edited into a compelling narrative, it's a short, heady experience to watch.

It draws an epiphany out of the ordinary”.

- John Doyle, The Globe and Mail

‘‘It's just about two Jewish girls sitting around kvetching’. That's how 34-year-old Montrealer Sharon Hyman describes her "feel bad movie of the year," Worried. It's a short film that explores the hopes and, mostly the fears of Hyman and her best pal, Naomi Levine.

The production is low tech, to be sure. But it is funny - and very off-the-wall”.

- Eric Kohanik, TV Times Magazine

“The entire cast of thirtysomething has nothing on Naomi Levine and Sharon Hyman, the creative team behind Worried. When the two filmmakers reached 32, they realized they were halfway to retirement and decided to take stock of their lives on camera. ...

The documentary is a surprisingly funny, in-depth look at life”.

- Catherine Dawson, TV Guide Magazine