Three Minutes – A Lengthening

During his trip through Europe in August 1938, the American David Kurtz filmed three minutes of everyday life in a small, predominantly Jewish town in Poland. Of the three thousand Jews who lived there, less than a hundred were to survive the Holocaust. Seventy years later, his grandson, the musician and author Glenn Kurtz, found this material and embarked on a year-long search for traces of the places and people immortalized on these few metres of cine film. The result: a book as gripping as a thriller, which was filmed in 2021 by Dutch artist Bianca Stigter. A formally radical essay film that works exclusively with David Kurtz's footage on the image track. A stirring work about film, memory and history, which we are proud to present as an Austrian premiere. (Michael Loebenstein)

Photo: US Holocaust Memorial Museum