The Netherlands, UK
Synopsis
Director's Statement
On Facebook I stumbled upon a book written about this film, 'Three Minutes in Poland' by Glenn Kurtz. The title fascinated me. I ordered the book and watched the footage, which can be found on the website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. While watching, I wondered: could you make those three minutes last longer, to keep the past in the present?
For this film essay I examined the footage in the fullest detail, to see what the celluloid would yield to viewers almost a century later. The footage is treated as an archaeological artefact to gain entrance to the past.
I contacted Glenn Kurtz, travelled to Nasielsk to see if any traces remained from the past, and went to Detroit to speak with survivor Maurice Chandler and his family.
After this extensive research, I edited the footage in different ways to bring to life as many of the facts and stories about Nasielsk as possible. A few seconds of the recording of a café become a dance scene, a single shot of the market square tells the story of the deportation of its Jewish citizens. All the faces that appear in the film are singled out and magnified to pay homage to the people of Nasielsk. The old images of the Polish town are combined with the way Nasielsk sounds today, creating a tense fusion of the past and the present.
THREE MINUTES – A LENGTHENING is an experiment that turns scarcity into a quality. Living in a time marked by an abundance of images that are never viewed twice, we do the opposite here: circle the same moments again and again, convinced that they will give us a different meaning each time. The film starts and ends with the same unedited found footage, but the second time you will look at it quite differently.
THREE MINUTES – A LENGTHENING investigates the nature of film and the perception of time. Through the act of watching, the viewers partake in the creation of a memorial.
Director's Biography
FILMOGRAPHY:
2021 - THREE MINUTES – A LENGTHENING, Documentary
Cast & Crew
Directed by: Bianca Stigter
Written by: Bianca Stigter
Main Producer: Floor Onrust
Produced by: Steve McQueen
Cinematography: David Kurtz
Editing: Katharina Wartena
Original Score: Wilko Sterke
Sound: Mark Glynne, Tom Bijnen
Visual Effects: Thaumar Rep
Cast: Helena Bonham Carter
Narrator: Helena Bonham Carter
Nominations and Awards
- Documentary Selection 2022