Bert Stern, Original Madman

Sophia Loren, Liz Taylor, Shirley MacLaine, Barbra Streisand, Madonna, Scarlett Johansson, Marilyn Monroe: the famous American photographer Bert Stern has snapped them all. In his own words, "Making love and making photographs were closely connected in my mind when it came to women." Stern is particularly famous for his portrait series of Marilyn Monroe and his "Lolita with heart-shaped glasses" for the poster of Stanley Kubrick's . What begins as a conventional portrait of a celebrity photographer gradually turns into a playful mirror gag between the 82-year-old and his muse Shannah Laumeister, 40 years his junior, who also directed the film. Organized into chapters and packed with photos, interviews and scenes from Stern's daily pursuits, reveals a man who venerated women and raised them to iconic proportions, but could hardly relate to them in everyday life. Underscored by warm, fresh sounding music, Laumeister has made a loving, intimate and vulnerable portrait of a man who appeared to have it all, but who also ended up losing it all.