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Netherlands, United Kingdom · 2021
1h 9m
Director Bianca Stigter
Starring Helena Bonham Carter, Glenn Kurtz, Moszek Tuchendler
Genre Documentary, History
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In 1938, David Kurtz shot three minutes of footage in the Jewish town Nasielsk in Poland. These moving images, mostly in color, are the only footage left of the Jewish inhabitants of Nasielsk before the Holocaust. The three minutes are examined to unravel the human stories hidden in the 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.
The Hollywood Reporter by Caryn James
An eloquent meditation on loss, memory and how film can shape them.
Slashfilm by Chris Evangelista
Three Minutes – A Lengthening is not a ghost story, but it still feels haunting.
Too often do we take for granted the miraculousness of the moving image. Stigter’s creative extension and exploration of Kurtz’s film reminds us. What can we glean from three minutes of film shot in 1938? Plenty.
A poetic meditation on film, history, and loss, Three Minutes – A Lengthening gives a glimpse into a lost world and then unpacks just how much can be learned from that brief fragment.
It grips the attention from start to finish.