PODCAST |Matt Micucci interviews Bianca Stigter, director and producer of the film Three Minutes: A Lengthening.
A conversation with Bianca Stigter, director of Three Minutes: A Lengthening, from the program of the 2021 Giornate degli Autori at the 78th Venice Film Festival. This is a one-of-a-kind experiement and investigation, the starting point of which is a three-minute amateur film shot in 1938 of a small Jewish Polish town. Topics discussed in this interview include the process of making such a unique film and of the investigation at large, as well as the importance of film as a document of past history and more.
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. As long as we are watching, history is not over yet. The three minutes of footage, mostly in colour, are the only moving images left of the Jewish inhabitants of Nasielsk before the Holocaust. The existing three minutes are examined to unravel the stories hidden in the celluloid. The footage is imaginatively edited to create a film that lasts more than an hour. Different voices enhance the images. Glenn Kurtz, grandson of David Kurtz, provides his knowledge of the footage. Maurice Chandler, who appears in the film as a boy, shares his memories. Actress Helena Bonham Carter narrates the essay film.