Relocation of displaced persons
Creator(s)
- Julien H. Bryan (Director)
- International Relief Organization (UNRRA) (Producer)
- Sam Bryan and International Film Foundation
- Julien H. Bryan (Producer)
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
INT, processing center for IRO (International Relief Organization). Families line up at desks where young men and women review their identity papers, create new documents, and arrange for them to emigrate to North America (Canada, United States), and various countries in South America. They are fingerprinted as well. VS, CUs of the refugees talking to the IRO workers. Expressions on the faces of refugees range from terrified to elated. 01:03:23:28 CU of a set of identity papers being created for a young woman, and her fingerprints being imprinted on the back of the paper. The same action is now viewed in a MS, where the young woman's family is visible as well. Footage has been staged for the camera in order to capture the entire process.
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
- EMIGRES/EMIGRATION
- AUSTRIA
- UNRRA
- DOCUMENTS
- BRYAN, JULIEN
- DISPLACED PERSONS (DP)
- POSTWAR
- FAMILIES
- WOMEN
- REFUGEES
- REFUGEE CAMPS
Places
- Linz, Austria
Genre
- Film
- Outtakes.