Three Minutes: A Lengthening

Padding a film is usually obvious to the viewer when a filmmaker hasn’t got the material to get the film to the required eighty to ninety minutes. So a few scenes are added, dialogue runs on, anything to hit the mark.

Three Minutes: A Lengthening stretches a three minute home move to seventy and it is a remarkable piece of work to go alongside a remarkable and tragic story, and thoroughly engrossing from start to end.

The 16mm film was shot by David Kurtz in 1938 while on holiday in Poland. The footage was found by his grandson in 2009 who then turned detective to find out where the film was shot (Nasielsk, Poland) and about Jewish community of the town. Tragically the majority were transported to the ghettos then murdered in the Treblinka death camp. Only around one hundred survived.

The film opens with those three minutes, from there director Bianca Stigter by skilfully and sensitively manipulating it recounts the story of the film taken by Kurtz, and its restoration.

There are offscreen contributions from experts about the restoration, academics, survivors of the camps and relatives. The dedicated detective work to identify the inhabitants of the town, through photos from other sources, and locations is astonishing and deeply moving. Every image had the potential to be a clue.

The words above the grocery store, very difficult to make out, proved crucial as did the traditional Lions of Judah over the wooden doors of the synagogue. Some of the faces in the crowds clear enough but who could identify them? Helen Bonham-Carter’s narration has a sublime quality conversational, beautifully paced and pitched throughout the film as the viewer is taken through the technical details of the restoration of the film, village life and the horror of the clearances and then the death camps.

What needs to be understood too is that taken on its own the Three Minutes of film are wonderful, joyous and full of life. Film cameras were rarely seen in those days, so someone coming along with one and filming was a novelty that seemingly everyone wanted to be a part of – apart from the orthodox members of the community.

So as the camera pans the square and the buildings, the inhabitants move with it, much to the annoyance of Kurtz who’s walking stick comes into shot occasionally to clear a path. There’re scenes outside of the synagogue and people leaving a building en masse; curious faces smile and laugh while others just stand there allowing themselves to be photographed until moved on.

It’s a fleeting glimpse into the life of a small town, social gatherings in restaurants, in the square, people just going about their daily lives. It’s an incredibly powerful piece of filmmaking that should have as wide a distribution as possible.

Three Minutes: A Lengthening was presented at the UK Jewish Film Festival and will be in cinemas from 2 December.