Sharff, Stefan, 1919-2003.
Stefan Sharff, Film Scholar at Columbia, Dies at 83
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
New York Times, May 19, 2003
Stefan Sharff, a filmmaker and author who was chairman of Columbia University's film division in the 1970's, died May 12 in Lebanon, N.H. He was 83.
The cause was lymphatic cancer, his family said in a statement. He lived on a farm in Cornish, N.H.
Mr. Sharff, who started Columbia's Ph.D. program in film studies despite having no doctorate himself, lived a colorful and varied life. He was an apprentice to the great Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein.
In 1968, when many Columbia students rebelled against their university, he took their side and was beaten by the police, his daughter Monica said.
He wrote two books about his friend Alfred Hitchcock. "The Art of Looking in Hitchcock's `Rear Window' " (Limelight, 1997) argued that the appeal of the film was largely a result of viewers' voyeurism.
Stefan Leon Lerner was born on Nov. 29, 1919, in Lublin, Poland. He later changed to his mother's surname because he grew to dislike his father.
In 1939 fled to the Soviet Union, where he joined the Moscow Film School. After the Germans invaded, he was evacuated to Alma Ata in Kazakhstan. It was there that he apprenticed with Eisenstein.
He returned to Poland during the closing days of the war and helped liberate a camp for prisoners of war. At the end of the war he was given a diplomatic position representing Poland in London. He fell out with the new Communist leaders and emigrated to the United States in the early 1950's.
He first worked at the United Nations as chief of the newsreel division, and soon started his own production company. He produced and directed many films for the United Nations and other international organizations.
He began teaching at Columbia in 1963, according to university records, and was chairman of the film department from 1970 to 1978. He remained at the university through 1993.
He made more than 100 documentaries, the majority of them for public television. They included a series on pivotal Supreme Court cases, another series on famous authors, a documentary on the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march, and a film on Robert F. Kennedy during his years as attorney general.
His books dealt mainly with the "language" by which moving images tell stories, particularly "Elements of Cinema: Toward a Theory of Cinesthetic Impact" (Columbia University Press, 1981). He also addressed such questions in his popular Analysis of Film course.
He produced and directed two feature films, "Across the River" in 1965 and "Run" 10 years later.
Mr. Sharff is survived by his third wife, Laura Foley; his daughters Monica, Joanna and Nina Sharff; his sons Matthew, Aaron and Billy; his stepchildren Adrian and Jennifer Benepe; and one granddaughter.
