Three Minutes: A Lengthening

<img src="https://data.ajff.org/sites/default/files/2022-01/web_embed_Laurel_JuryInCompetition_02.png" style="max-width: 20%; width: 20%; border-width: 0px; margin-left: 10px; float: right;" />Forensic scrutiny of amateur footage from 1938 Poland yields a haunting testament to people and places lost to the Holocaust. Filmed by an American tourist, the rare 16mm images—mostly color—capture scenes of everyday prewar life in the small village of Nasielsk. A year later, the Jewish quarter would be liquidated by the Nazis. The snippet of battered celluloid, meticulously restored, was nearly beyond saving, before rescue from a Florida attic. Examined with painstaking precision, every frame is exhumed to find evocative details amid the unsuspecting faces and bustling cobblestone streets. With stirring narration by Helena Bonham Carter and an effective minimalistic score, this precious time capsule is a charged meditation on history and memory.