”Three Minutes: A Lengthening” with Bianca Stigter

Top Docs: Award-Winning Documentary Filmmakers

When the writer Glenn Kurtz stumbled upon an old home movie buried in his parents’ closet in Florida, he inadvertently discovered a whole world that, tragically, had been nearly erased from history. Returning as a tourist in 1938 to the small village of Nasielsk outside Warsaw where he grew up, his grandfather David Kurtz brought with him a brand new 16mm Kodak movie camera. The three minutes of footage he shot there, which later turned up in the closet, are now among the only surviving moving images of any of the Polish villages destroyed in the Holocaust. Years later, the writer and critic Bianca Stigter (“Three Minutes – Thirteen Minutes – Thirty Minutes”) would see those three minutes posted on the website of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and embark on her own investigative journey. The result is the extraordinary documentary Three Minutes: A Lengthening.

Joining Ken to discuss her film, which includes Kurtz’ original footage, Bianca describes her creative “lengthening” process, which involved adding fascinating historical context and an almost microscopic level of detail. With very few markers, how were Glenn and Bianca able to identify people and places in the footage? Why was it so important to Bianca that viewers experience the footage actively rather than passively — and how did her filmmaking encourage that dynamic? And how did a key sequence in the film turn into an unforgettable memorial to over 150 people whose faces were captured by David Katz’ camera? While nothing can bring back the Jewish community of Nasielsk, the efforts of first David, then Glenn, and now, Bianca, have at least ensured that their stories and faces will live on in our own collective memories.

“Three Minutes: A Lengthening”, which is being released by Super LTD, can be seen in select theaters nationwide starting on August 26.

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