Jelena Sofronijevic
What can we learn from just three minutes of found film? All we initially know from this 16mm Kodachrome colour film is the rough time of day it was shot – 11am, it would seem, from the light and shadow. But where was it recorded? Who are the people and faces recorded? And what happened to them?
A souvenir
When David Kurtz filmed his family’s travels in Europe in 1938, he was no doubt aware of their many journeys. Emigrating from Poland with his family at aged four, he perceived himself as an American more than an assimilated migrant. As such, ‘Grand Tour’ was simply the done thing for the well-to-do.
“He was not aware his souvenir would lead to a book, a 75-minute-long feature film, and an altogether different approach to understanding history.”
Their diversion to Poland acknowledged the family’s roots. Days afterwards, Kurtz would write back on a postcard from the Linden Café on Unter den Linden in Berlin which shares the same trees as the streets in his home village. He was not aware his souvenir would lead to a book, a 75-minute-long feature film, and an altogether different approach to understanding history.
Three Minutes: A Lengthening focuses on the found footage, but it is also a historical detective story, a journey taken by both David Kurtz’s grandson, Glenn, and the viewer. Glenn first believes he’s found footage of his grandmother’s village on the Polish-Ukrainian border, whose three-thousand-strong Jewish population was wiped out during the Holocaust. A rare survivor of the village rejects.
The distinctive synagogue doors – one lacking its Lion of Judah, a casualty of a well-publicised attack by Polish nationalists – identify the village as Nasielsk, his grandfather’s birthplace. Similarly populated before World War II, just one hundred of its population would survive.
Highlighting stories
In the first shots of footage, played uninterrupted, it is immediately striking how the children are smiling, curious, and scrambling to get into the shot. It’s a story of the Holocaust before the Holocaust, of people enjoying life.
We only ever see this footage, both worked and reworked, as director Barbara Stigter directs our attention towards the context itself. The audio is an unspoken character, with narration, classical music and atmosphere (never visual) recorded on location in present-day Nasielsk. But it is hard to imagine this film without voiceovers that explain the footage and are animated by ‘anecdotes’ shared by survivors in their own voices.
One individual is Moszek Tuchendler (now Maurice Chandler, from Florida), who was recognised by his granddaughter when the footage was first published online by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Hats are usually markers of a kid’s class and status, but here we see them all together. With his foreign gaze and presence, Kurtz’s camera finds a way to ‘scramble the social hierarchy.’
“Despite the bright red colours of their dresses and ribbons, we know little of the women in this film”
Later, we hear the unbelievable story of a man who rescues his girlfriend from imprisonment by posing as German officer, borrowing the jacket of the anti-Hitlerite guard who lived upstairs.
Helena Bonham Carter narrates, her audio only loosely edited to keep it more uncut and breathy (though clearly clean and studio recorded). This is a subtle but conscious decision that prevents the narrator from becoming a didactic, ‘unseen authority’, creating an inclusive conversation and journey with Kurtz and the viewer. Bonham Carter brought much of her own ‘phrasing and lived experience’ to her questions, Stigter and co-producer Steve McQueen suggested, in a special post-screening Q&A.
Despite the bright red colours of their dresses and ribbons, we know little of the women in this film. Nor the Orthodox Jews; in both instances, religious restrictions prevented their direct interaction. These presences and absences demand more creative problem-solving. Their efforts prove even more fruitful. A historian uses close letter reading and scours the national archives in Warsaw to read the owner’s name on the sign of the grocery shop. Other stories shed light on the Filar Button Factory, and how couples would dance together to the BBC Radio orchestras in the restaurant on a Saturday night.
Slowing down
Three Minutes: A Lengthening extends our engagement, forcing the viewer to slow down, and spend time with its subjects. It’s a mindful, moving meditation on what often gets missed from the moments we typically overlook. We are not simply forced to confront this difficult history, but look closer, and read into the grain.
“In the absence of many such first-hand accounts, the film is a vital visual source”
Stigter lingers in long shots, closing in on the footage of the town square. We hear a rare and harrowing testimony: in December 1939, Nasielsk’s Jewish population was rounded up in the town square and sent by train to Treblinka, where nearly all of them died.
In the absence of many such first-hand accounts, the film is a vital visual source. Its handling becomes a dual project of history-writing and memorialisation – a radical model is offered in both respects.
A collage slowly extracts the 105 distinct faces from the footage, layering those that crop up time and again (the filmmakers subtly acknowledge themselves as part of this history-making, when the credits feature their photographs too).
‘This was never something we were supposed to watch,’ says Stigter. In part, she refers to the Nazi effort to erase Jews and Poles altogether. But also, because this was created as a home movie, and not for public consumption.
Restoring the past
Considered efforts have been made to avoid manipulation or further marginalisation. For instance, much attention is paid to the process of sensitive restoration of the original footage – which we see, vinegar leaked and torn – alongside its cellular and digital iterations.
More often than not, Stigter opts for the ‘second restoration’ – before Three Minutes: A Lengthening’s SFX team cleaned it further – to prevent its people being seen as too modern, too contemporary, too close to our reality. Likewise, she shows, but then moves on from, a 3D model of the village.
“The Lengthening is a remarkable film that must be seen widely, in the hope that someone else sees and remembers another face in the crowd.”
A Lengthening addresses these ethical questions with great care. How and should we respond to this found footage? Is something intangible lost over time, regardless of how the footage is preserved? And what place do we as viewers have in observing these lives, and pondering hypotheticals – like what we might read into Kurtz’s own insecurity about his Polish roots in America?
Nasielsk held no memorials to this atrocity until 2021. And Three Minutes: A Lengthening is yet to get a German distributor, contradicting the stereotype of the country’s progressive approach to historical reckoning.
But if the recovery of this history was dependent on a chance finding, then so too will future stories. The Lengthening is a remarkable film that must be seen widely, in the hope that someone else sees and remembers another face in the crowd.
Three Minutes: A Lengthening runs at selected Curzon cinemas on 2 December 2022.
NB: The terms German, Nazi, and they are used in line with testimonies in the film.
Image courtesy of John Moeses Bauan via Unsplash. See image license here. No changes were made to this image.
Jelena Sofronijevic
Jelena Sofronijevic (@jelsofron) is an audio producer and freelance journalist, who makes content at the intersections of intercultural political history and the arts. They are the producer of EMPIRE LINES, a podcast which uncovers the unexpected flows of empires through artworks, and historicity, a new series of audio walking tours which explore how cities got to be the way they are - starting with London.