Krakow Jewish quarter
Creator(s)
- Julien H. Bryan (Producer)
- Sam Bryan and International Film Foundation
- Julien H. Bryan (Director)
Biographical History
Julien Hequembourg Bryan (1899-1974) was an American documentarian and filmmaker. Bryan traveled widely taking 35mm film that he sold to motion picture companies. In the 1930s, he conducted extensive lecture tours, during which he showed film footage he shot in the former USSR. Between 1935 and 1938, he captured unique records of ordinary people and life in Nazi Germany and in Poland, including Jewish areas of Warsaw and Krakow and anti-Jewish signs in Germany. His footage appeared in March of Time theatrical newsreels. His photographs appeared in Life Magazine. He was in Warsaw in September 1939 when Germany invaded and remained throughout the German siege of the city, photographing and filming what would become America's first cinematic glimpse of the start of WWII. He recorded this experience in both the book Siege (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1940) and the short film Siege (RKO Radio Pictures, 1940) nominated for an Academy Award in 1940. In 1946, Bryan photographed the efforts of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency in postwar Europe.
Scope and Content
VS, Street scenes in the Jewish quarter of Krakow, Poland. Man selling balloons. Young girl on the street asking for directions from Orthodox Jewish men. Older Jewish couple posing outside of their shop-M. Finkelstein is the name on the placard above their shop door. Good CUs of the couple. CUs of young, religious Jewish boys laughing and talking, conscious of the camera. Young children playing in a courtyard, moving large twigs around the street as an elderly woman watches them, preparing for the harvest festival of Sukkot beneath the archway made famous in an iconic Roman Vishniac photograph. From Julien Bryan's film "Poland the Country and the People" released in 1948, shot 1936-1937.
Note(s)
Parts of this story can be seen in Story 3945, Film ID 3001; Story 4116, Film ID 3005; and Story 765, Film ID 507. The original film reel was also labeled "JB Pol Neg A 7771 Pol A33B Orig Neg R1 and R2". Detailed preservation notes from the film lab are available in Film and Video department files. Additional photographs are available in the USHMM Photo Archives.
Subjects
- CLOTHES
- POLES
- STREETCARS
- JEWISH LIFE (PRE-WAR)
- CHILDREN
- SHOPS
- WOMEN
- HOLIDAYS (SUKKOT)
- CHILDREN (JEWISH)
- POLAND
- BUILDINGS
- STREETS
- BRYAN, JULIEN
- JEWS
Places
- Krakow, Poland
Genre
- Outtakes.
- Film