Sundance 2022: Three Minutes – A Lengthening (Spotlight Section) | Review
Presented in the Spotlight section of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, Bianca Stigter’s Three Minutes – A Lengthening is a beautiful but futile effort in making a moment a last.
As the 2022 Sundance Film Festival continues to unfold, we delved into the Spotlight section, in which, along The Worst Person In The World (Joachim Trier, 2021), we came across Three Minutes – A Lengthening, which debuted to critical acclaim at the 2021 Venice International Film Festival and Telluride Film Festival.
Bianca Stigter’s Three Minutes – A Lengthening appoints itself a hefty task: to prolong time. The film, based on the book Three Minutes in Poland by Glenn Kurtz, is an intense and exhaustive examination of three minutes and change of home footage shot in 1938 in Nasielsk, Poland, by Glenn’s grandfather David. Three Minutes – A Lengthening is an analysis of memory, time, and the act of documentation, both in terms of the footage it is composed of and its own existence as a film itself.
Nasielsk is a small town just 50 kilometers north of Warsaw. Prior to the Second World War, the town’s population was 7,000, nearly half of whom were Jewish. David Kurtz was born in Nasielsk and immigrated to the United States as a child. On a European vacation years later, David returned to his hometown with an at-the-time state-of-the-art film camera. Little did he know that just one year after he filmed in Nasielsk, the 3,000 Jewish residents would be deported to Treblinka concentration camp. Of 3,000, only 100 survived.
It is with this knowledge that we as viewers watch this footage of everyday Jewish life in Nasielsk. Kids play on the streets, families leave synagogue, a woman exits a grocery store. All are mesmerized by the camera, waving, jumping, and smiling into its lens, and into your eyes. The nearly decayed footage then consumed several years of Glenn’s life. He spent the better part of a decade restoring the 16mm film (with the help of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum), identifying places, shops, faces, and, with little luck, names.
Three Minutes – A Lengthening consists solely of David’s footage. It is repeated, slowed down, sped up, zoomed in, recolored, and rewinded over and over again. It is an editing feat that never feels repetitive. In short, it is “lengthened.” Layered over these scenes is actress Helena Bonham Carter’s narration, Glenn Kurtz’s recounting, testimony of two survivors from Nasielsk (who Glenn miraculously managed to track down), readings of written testimony, and a soft but enveloping soundtrack.
As actress Helena Bonham Carter narrates, “film, by itself, preserves detail, without necessarily conveying knowledge.” And so this film tries mightily to attach knowledge to the detail we see. This is all in hopes of prolonging history, of bringing the past into the present and extending it into the future. This hope stems from our desire to remember those who perished, so that it may not happen again.
It’s an intriguing idea: if we are still watching, they are still living. If we are still seeing the smiling children staring back at us, time warps and expands until the present moment. However, as powerfully as this film tries to keep memories alive, a feeling of pessimistic defeat lurks beneath the surface. We cannot hold on to this lengthened time; it is stretched as far as it can go. We will one day forget. Perhaps in fifty years, perhaps in a thousand. We can prolong it, but we can’t lengthen anything into forever. Still, what else can we do but try?
