Tom Stern

by Bruno Delbonnel

par Bruno Delbonnel

[ English ] [ français ]

I am very honored to sponsor Tom Stern to the AFC. I met him two years ago at Camerimage. I was impressed by his work on Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby. I saw in those films what I found absolutely remarkable in the work of Haskell Wexler, Vilmos Zsigmond or Conrad Hall : the distortion of what could be described as a realistic image.

I refer to the very specific type of image of the American Seventies seen in films like Scarecrow, Panic in Needle Park, Five Easy Pieces... To this great tradition Tom Stern adds a modernity that seems to me very close to the contemporary American photography of Stephen Shore and William Eggleston, which makes his work unique.

We talked about all this during the week spent together in Lodz, but also about his past as a gaffer. This makes his work even more remarkable because, after years working alongside Jack Green, Bruce Surtees or Conrad Hall (remember that he was a gaffer on The Road to Perdition, which is one of the most beautiful films in recent years), he was able to separate his work from these very formidable DPs and find a very personal approach.
Welcome, Tom Stern.