Rare home movie footage shot in Poland in 1938 becomes a priceless historical artifact, documenting people and places obliterated by the Holocaust in this haunting and provocative documentary essay. Director Stigter utilizes the three minutes-and-some-odd-seconds of 16mm film shot by American visitor David Kurtz in the Jewish quarter of Nasielsk to craft an original and incisive meditation on history, memory, memorials and the very nature of celluloid. Stigter’s method is simultaneously creative and forensic, but never sentimental. Working with a digitized copy that bears the blemishes left by the deterioration of the original celluloid, she conjures up exactly what she declares in the subtitle: a lengthening. On the image track, the three-plus minutes play out again and again, but Stigter cleverly varies the way that she presents the limited material to us. By the end of the film, the images resonate with a larger meaning; Stigter has created a unique memorial.
Director Biography
Bianca Stigter is a cultural critic and historical writer in the Netherlands, where she was also editor of the Dutch national newspaper NRC Handelsblad. An associate producer on 12 Years a Slave (2013) and Widows (2018), she is making her directorial debut with the found-footage documentary Three Minutes: A Lengthening (2022).
Sponsors
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