Prison in Prague, 1946
Creator(s)
- Julien H. Bryan (Director)
- International Relief Organization (UNRRA) (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
A very brief sequence in an unidentified prison in Prague, Czechoslovakia, 1946. MS, from low angle. An inmate cleans a tile floor on his hands and knees with a wet rag and a bucket of water as a guard watches over him. The guard is in the foreground of the shot, and is seen mainly from the waist down, as a coat and a pair of boots in shadow. The inmate is in the background, and his figure is well lit.
Note(s)
At the time of the filming, Julien Bryan was working under contract for the International Relief Organization/UNRRA and tasked with capturing images of Europe rebuilding. The finished films were intended for an international [European] audience, often screened under the auspices of the US Department of State. 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
- POSTWAR
- PRISONERS
- PRISONERS (CZECH)
- GUARDS
- UNRRA
- PRISONS
- CZECHOSLOVAKIA
- BRYAN, JULIEN
- UNIFORMS
Places
- Prague, Czechoslovakia
Genre
- Outtakes.
- Film