Russian Christian Orthodox church service
Creator(s)
- Julien H. Bryan (Producer)
- Sam Bryan and International Film Foundation
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
EXT, LS of unidentified factory, quickly cuts to an INT scene in an orthodox church whre people receive communion, exact location and date, as well as the reason for the service are unknown; images of Russian iconography. EXT, church procession, large crowds are gathered outside the church. This is a different location and church than the church featured in the first scene of this story. 01:07:23:25 CU of a bearded Russian Orthodox priest reading from a book of scripture outside the church, the pages of the book are blowing in the wind. VS, several angles on the priest and the congregation outside in the cold and snow. The camera pans a sea of Russian peasant woman's faces; many are making the sign of the cross.
Note(s)
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
- CHURCHES
- STATUES
- WINTER
- SNOW
- PEASANTS
- SOVIETS
- CROSSES
- CHILDREN
- PRIESTS
- BRYAN, JULIEN
- BEARDS
- RELIGIOUS SERVICES
- WOMEN
- SOVIET UNION
- CROWDS
- PRAYING
Places
- , Soviet Union
Genre
- Outtakes.
- Film