Becoming Bert Stern

In the 1950s and ’60s, Bert Stern’s furious conceptual energy and visual wit transformed American commercial photography, helping turn advertising into the worldwide cultural phenomenon it is today. And his legendary final session with Marilyn Monroe, completed just before her death, remains an unsurpassed example of intimacy in the genre of celebrity portraiture. Writer-director Shannah Laumeister, for 30 years a close friend and photographic subject of the rueful, fatalistic Stern, also interviews old girlfriends and ex-wives, explores Stern’s romantic, sexual and chemical excesses, and reveals his ruthless creative determination. It too is portraiture both unsparing and tender. –Telluride Film Festival