THREE MINUTES: A LENGTHENING

Presented by PMA Films with the Maine Jewish Film Festival

September 16, 17, and 18 at 2pm

Portland Museum of Art

Tickets available on the PMA Films website

With three consecutive days of afternoon screenings, don’t miss the extraordinary new documentary film THREE MINUTES: A LENGTHENING, directed by Bianca Stigter, with narration by Academy Award nominee Helena Bonham Carter.

Three minutes of home movie footage, mostly in color, shot by David Kurtz in 1938, are the only known moving images left of the Jewish inhabitants of Nasielsk, Poland, before the Holocaust. Those precious minutes are examined in intricate detail to unravel the human stories hidden in the celluloid.

Tracing the story of those three minutes begins with the journey of Glenn Kurtz to discover more about his grandfather’s film, ultimately identifying people and places otherwise erased from history, and helping to connect one Holocaust Survivor with his lost childhood.

These three minutes of film offer glimpses of everyday life. We see townspeople: young and old, wealthy and poor, religious and secular, shopkeepers, artisans, housewives, students playing hooky from school. But for viewers, these three minutes— looked at and examined from different points of view— pack an intense emotional punch. Because we know what the people we are watching do not: that within months virtually all be murdered. Of all we see, nothing— except streets and buildings— will be left.

Written and Directed by Bianca Stigter. Co-Produced by Steve McQueen (Director, ’12 Years a Slave’). Narrated by Helena Bonham Carter. Produced by Floor Onrust. Inspired by the book Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film by Glenn Kurtz.

The film screening Three Minutes: A Lengthening is a collaboration between the Maine Jewish Film Festival and the Portland Museum of Art.