Three Minutes – A Lengthening is a different approach to a documentary in that, except for a brief capture of a 3D recreation that feels like a carryover from an earlier vision on the project, the film only uses footage from 3 odd minutes captured by David Kurtz in 1938. How does one make a 69-minute documentary using under 4 minutes of unique footage? By showing it in multiple ways – in various levels of focus, exposures, restoration, and zoom. But why? Because the 3+ minutes of footage shot by David Kurtz was of the Jewish community in Nasielsk, Poland, a community of 3000. The community would be invaded by the Nazis one year later, and in 1945 there would only be 100 survivors. This footage is a living memory and director Bianca Stigter by lengthening the time you spent with them provided Memoriam, for the community and for the many unidentified people, mostly children, that appear in the film.
Before any narration was ever spoken, director Bianca Stigter chose to play David Kurtz’s Nasielsk footage as a whole. What stood out to me the most was all the people, particularly the children, and how they gravitated towards the camera, trying to get in the frame. It makes sense as even though video cameras were not widely available, movies were a big deal, and this was a chance to be in a movie, even if it was a home movie. One that by the sounds of it was likely put away after the year and forgotten about until David Kurtz’s grandson Glenn Kurtz uncovered it, restored it, and made efforts to uncover its origins. Later, commentary from one of the children captured in the film added context to the significance of the types of hats on the boy’s heads and how the camera threw their whole system out of whack as normally the two types of hats would never be mixed. This is context I wouldn’t have gotten had I only seen the 3-minute film without any additional background.
It’s a Holocaust documentary, so it has parts that are very hard to listen to. I noticed that the harder the stuff was to listen to the grainer the image on the screen became, making it so that there were no images on the screen to pull your focus. The footage itself was restored very well, especially the colour film. At times, for effect, the film went back to footage with more of aged film effect, and often employed projector sounds. The film takes the time to provide context to the filmmaking process itself, so viewers understand things like why the reds pop the most in the frame, but it also provides context to the fact that had Glenn not found the film reels when he did, that the film would’ve been beyond saving. Then this picture memory of the Nasielsk Jewish Community, one that captured over 100 of its members, would’ve been lost forever, like the community itself.
Three Minutes A Lengthening mentions how the Nasielsk has changed, even providing sounds of it at present, but never shows it, preferring to keep you rooted in Nasielsk as it was in 1938. A world forever lost. There was commentary about how Brooklyn of today versus the one from 1938 is as changed as Nasielsk. And it’s undoubtedly true. But when I see pictures of Old Brooklyn (or Old Toronto in my case), I see how much things have changed, but I don’t have a visceral reaction to it because they happened gradually, over time, the natural course of things. When I watched this film, and all the smiling faces on the kids as they pushed to be seen, it was impossible to disconnect the image to the knowledge that many of them were never seen again, that their community was lost, that the change was not gradual or natural.
Premiered at Venice will follow with screenings at Telluride and TIFF.