Bianca Stigter on THREE MINUTES: A LENGTHENING
Coming soon to Recycled Screenings: Johannes Binotto's METALEPTIC ATTACK
Happy Friday!
A quick newsletter here to take you into the weekend. I’m thrilled to share the 36th episode of The Video Essay Podcast, which features a conversation with critic and filmmaker Bianca Stigter. We talk about Bianca’s revelatory documentary, Three Minutes: A Lengthening.
![THREE MINUTES - A LENGTHENING [Official Trailer] - YouTube](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F31283a60-69d1-4af0-96d1-433114d6e58e_1280x720.jpeg "THREE MINUTES - A LENGTHENING [Official Trailer] - YouTube")
For those who have not seen the film, it is streaming and available on VOD depending on your location. In the United States, it is on Hulu. It is also available via BBC iPlayer. The film concerns a 1938 home movie shot by David Kurtz in Nasielsk, Poland. He films a Jewish community there just before the Holocaust. Stigter’s film begins by playing this footage in full. The film then employs a number of videographic techniques to add context to the film, to lengthen it and reveal the history of the town, time and people it depicts. Matt Zoller Seitz calls it “a great film about filmmaking and a quietly devastating memorial for lives long gone.”
On the podcast, Bianca and I discuss the film's origins as a video essay, the process of creating this documentary, the various videographic techniques employed, and much more. Listen here.
Before recording this podcast, I also wrote a short essay on the film for Crooked Marquee, which you can read here.
On Monday, May 15, Recycled Screenings will present Metaleptic Attack, the latest work from artist and scholar Johannes Binotto. More here.
Here is Johannes’ creator’s statement:
An attempt to remake a film by destroying it. To make it even more frightening than it ever dared to be, by letting the film attack my own viewing and editing machines. And have my viewing practices attack the film.
When Alfred Hitchcock for his 1963 film The Birds instead of natural audio used electronic sounds created by German composer Oskar Sala, he did so because of the ability of these disturbing sound objects "to vibrate on more than just one level". The electronic sound of the birds not only oversteps the boundary between living being and machine, but also between the content and form, as if the shrieking sounds of the birds not only attack the characters within the film but he film itself.
It is this I tried not only to capture, but to amplify – unbearably. From sound to image, from cinema to video, and back.
Have a great weekend!
Your friend,
Will
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