Tracker Pixel for Entry

​Time Machine: Bianca Stigter’s ‘Three Minutes: A Lengthening’

Cinema | February 23rd, 2022

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

The only nonfiction film to be selected for the 2022 Sundance Film Festival’s Spotlight section – a prestige category highlighting movies that have already premiered to acclaim elsewhere – Bianca Stigter’s feature-length directorial debut “Three Minutes: A Lengthening” is an inspired piece of cinematic archaeology. Stigter does exactly what the title of the piece invitingly and enigmatically implies: she examines a short section of 16mm home movie footage from every possible angle, stopping and starting and running and re-running the images without ever cutting to talking heads.

The film in question was taken by David Kurtz in 1938 while on vacation in Europe and shows some of the Jewish inhabitants of Nasielsk, a small town north of Warsaw where Kurtz was born. Kurtz’s grandson Glenn discovered the reel in a closet in 2009. Realizing the celluloid was brittle, faded, and on the very edge of salvageable, the movie was rescued and restored through the efforts of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. A lesson plan designed for grades seven to twelve on the museum’s website uses the Kurtz footage to “engage students in understanding both the individuality of Jewish lives affected by or lost in the Holocaust and the cumulative effects of the Holocaust on communities.”

Within seven years of Kurtz’s visit, only about one-hundred of Nasielsk’s approximately 3000 Jews would be alive.

Stigter’s excellent film, which does indeed lengthen the Nasielsk section of Kurtz’s home movies to a total running time of just under seventy minutes, works first as a rare and valuable artifact, a strange and unexpected crystal ball allowing us to peer into an ordinary moment in time just prior to the unthinkable arrival of and occupation by the German Nazis who would send so many to death. But Stigter’s direction transforms the film and story into so much more than a historical lesson on atrocity and genocide. The narration, delivered by Helena Bonham Carter, constantly asks the viewer to imagine contours, possibilities, and meanings about the act of seeing, witnessing, and understanding.

Several writers have already compared Stigter’s approach to the frame-by-frame scrutiny bestowed upon Abraham Zapruder’s 8mm documentation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. But instead of capturing a tragedy, “Three Minutes: A Lengthening” anticipates one; in a matter of months, the people we observe smiling and waving at the novelty of being in front of Kurtz’s camera will be removed to places like Treblinka.

In the Kurtz footage, around 150 individuals are seen. Of those 150, fewer than a dozen were positively identified by name. It is one of the film’s most sobering revelations, intensified by the passion in Glenn Kurtz’s voiceover as he details the efforts to track any survivors who might have been in his grandfather’s viewfinder. Sections like this one, or the one in which another person methodically decodes the blurry letters on a briefly-visible grocery shop sign, bring into proximity the limitations and the promises of film. That thoughtful metanarrative contemplation and Stigter’s exciting structural choices make for a profound experience. 

Recently in:

By Alicia Underlee NelsonSenate Bill 2307 has passed, despite testimony against it from North Dakota residents and library professionals. The bill, which restricts access to library materials, now awaits Governor Armstrong’s…

By Prairie Rose Seminolems.prairierose@gmail.com I was a child who walked behind my parents into classrooms and kitchens, spaces of song and prayer, where teachings lived in the air and settled on my shoulders. I didn’t yet have…

Saturday, April 26, 1:30-3:30 p.m.Rourke Art Gallery + Museum, 521 Main Ave., MoorheadThings are coming up rosy at the Rourke in a true feast of the senses during the third annual “Gallery in Bloom” exhibit. The pop-up…

By Sabrina Hornungsabrina@hpr1.com I feel like reading a newspaper is the equivalent of listening to music on vinyl. Not only is it analog, it’s an experience. I might be a little biased, but there's something about the rustling…

By Ed Raymondfargogadly@gmail.comThe wizards and kleagles in whites now wear blue suits and red tiesA hundred years ago, more than 30,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan from virtually every state in the Union wearing their white…

By Rick Gionrickgion@gmail.com Holiday wine shopping shouldn’t have to be complicated. But unfortunately it can cause unneeded anxiety due to an overabundance of choices. Don’t fret my friends, we once again have you covered…

By Rick Gionrickgion@gmail.com After a very inspiring conversation with Kayla Houchin of Sonder Bakehouse a few weeks ago, I decided that it’s an appropriate time to write a column about some of the sweet people who are involved…

Mooncats and Pert Near Sandstone play Empire TheatreBy Sabrina Hornungsabrina@hpr1.comThe MoonCats describe themselves as “Americonscious Campfire Folk.” They have a clear acoustic folk sound with a sense of whimsy — think…

By Greg Carlsongregcarlson1@gmail.comRyan Coogler goes big and bold with “Sinners,” a sweaty, bloody vampire movie set in 1932. The filmmaker stuffs this universe with enough ideas to serve a limited-series season of episodic…

By Raul Gomez Modern Man was a gentle soul. If you were down or just wanted a friend, he’d be there for you. I remember the first day I met Modern Man. It was Jeremiah Fuglseth and me. He wanted to write about this legendary…

By John Showalterjohn.d.showalter@gmail.comHigh Plains Reader had the opportunity to interview two mysterious new game show hosts named Milt and Bradley Barker about an upcoming event they will be putting on at Brewhalla. What…

By Annie Prafckeannieprafcke@gmail.com AUSTIN, Texas – As a Chinese-American, connecting to my culture through food is essential, and no dish brings me back to my mother’s kitchen quite like hotdish. Yes, you heard me right –…

By Sabrina Hornungsabrina@hpr1.comNew Jamestown Brewery Serves up Local FlavorThere’s something delicious brewing out here on the prairie and it just so happens to be the newest brewery west of the Red River and east of the…

By Josette Ciceronunapologeticallyanxiousme@gmail.com What does it mean to truly live in a community —or should I say, among community? It’s a question I have been wrestling with since I moved to Fargo-Moorhead in February 2022.…

By Alicia Underlee NelsonProtests against President Trump’s policies and the cuts made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are planned across North Dakota and western Minnesota Friday, April 4 and…

By Faye Seidlerfayeseidler@gmail.com In 2023, the Superintendent of Fargo Public Schools, Rupak Ghandi, gave a passionate plea to the Fargo School Board to follow federal law, because a recently passed state law would increase…