Catholic church celebration and schoolhouse in central Poland
Creator(s)
- Sam Bryan and International Film Foundation
- Julien H. Bryan (Camera Operator)
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
Polish country scenes, horse-drawn wagons, farmer. MCU of road sign "Zduny 6 km, Lowicz 17km." Preparations for the Easter holiday. Townspeople are dressed in traditional, central Polish folk costume. People are transported in the back of a wagon, riding bicycles, walking to church. General activity surrounding the day's religious festivities. Two young girls in traditional dress, walking towards church, horses with wagons parked in the town square, a young girl with a full head of curly blonde hair that is being braided and combed by her mother and her sister. Church. VAR, EXTs of the elaborate procession. 01:16:44 EXT of newly constructed school house and the schoolyard. INTs of schoolhouse with kindergarten age children after performing on a small stage, sitting at tables with their teacher, drawing. INT, posters. VAR, children learning grammar, studying, using an abacus, etc. EXT, girls play dodgeball in the school courtyard, all are in traditional peasant dress, with large, full skirts and scarves cover their heads. More country scenes, peasant women, farmers picking potatoes, tilling the soil, farm equipment. Comic scene with an older man at a grain mill driven by a horse. Quick shot of a farmer filling a horse drawn wagon with hay. Back to the comic scene, the man is seated on the ground, the arm of the mill that the horses are churning comes closer and closer to his head until it knocks his hat off, a quick series of CUs of this action, the man smiles for the camera.
Note(s)
See also Stories 4158 and 4160 for similar or duplicate footage. Transferred at Various FPS Additional photographs are available in the USHMM Photo Archives.
Subjects
- TEACHERS
- SCHOOLS
- CLERGY
- BICYCLES
- BRYAN, JULIEN
- PERFORMANCES
- FARMERS/FARMING
- POLAND
- RELIGIOUS SERVICES
- PEASANTS
- PARADES
- CHILDREN
- CARTS/WAGONS
- HORSES
- PLAYING
- WOMEN
- MACHINERY
- POTATOES
- CHURCHES
Places
- Lowicz, Poland
Genre
- Outtakes.
- Film