Bianca Stigter’s ” Three Minutes – A Lengthening” narrated by Helena Bonham Carter is described as a haunting documentary essay that expands upon film’s place in history. Co-produced by Steve McQueen, the documentary world premieres at the 2021 Venice International Film Festival on September 4 and will receive its Canadian premiere at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival in mid-September.
Three Minutes – A Lengthening presents a home movie shot by David Kurtz in 1938 in a Jewish town in Poland and tries to postpone its ending. Discovered by Kurtz’s grandson Glenn in his parents’ Florida home, the amateur footage his grandfather shot on a European holiday captures the Jewish inhabitants of Nasielsk just one year before the Nazis invaded and most were eventually killed in the Treblinka extermination camp.
Director Bianca Stigter transforms Kurtz’s vivid three minutes of film—shot mostly in color—into a remarkable meditation on history and memory. Run forwards and backwards, often frame by frame, circling the same moments again and again, the human stories hidden in the celluloid are unraveled. As long as we are watching, history is not over yet.
Featuring the voices of Glenn Kurtz, whose book “Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film” inspired the film, and Maurice Chandler, who appears in the footage as a boy.
Bianca Stigter is a Dutch historian and cultural critic. She made the short essay films Three Minutes – Thirteen Minutes – Thirty Minutes (2014) and I Kiss This Letter – Farewell Letters from Amsterdammers (2018). She is associate producer of Steve McQueen’s feature films 12 Years a Slave and Widows. In 2019, she published the book “Atlas of an Occupied City: Amsterdam 1940-1945.”
Three Minutes – A Lengthening was written and directed by Bianca Stigter. It was produced by Floor Onrust and co-produced by Steve McQueen. The footage was shot by David Kurtz. Editor: Katharina Wartena. Sound: Mark Glynne. Music: Wilko Sterke. Narration: Helena Bonham Carter. Production: Family Affair Films in co-production with Lammas Park with the support of The Netherlands Film Fund, Amsterdam Fund for the Arts and VPRO. World sales: Autlook Filmsales. (2021, 69 min., Netherlands)
Watch the trailer for Three Minutes – A Lengthening.