Bryan locates individuals he filmed during the German siege of Warsaw
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
Reel 3B Julien Bryan shows his book "Siege" to Poles in Warsaw, looking to find people he photographed in 1939, including priest Father Wlodarczyk, photographed in 1939 with a broken portrait in church ruins (Photo Archives W/S 47239). VAR CUs of Poles gathered around Bryan. Small church. Julien Bryan with a female interpreter, Christina Cekalska, in front of a sign for the National Theater. MS, Apolonia Wiktorzak, who was photographed in 1939 holding a loaf of bread, now 65 years old (Photo Archives W/S 47371). Longer view of the group crowding around Bryan and Apolonia in front of their homes in the Polish countryside. Two children on city street walk toward camera. LS, St. Alexander's Church in Warsaw with a crowd at the entrance. LS, man walking along road with three children, a cyclist, and a building with façade under construction. JB and Christina look at National Theater posters. Catholic mass spills onto church steps, closer shots, children, crowd kneels. Bryan with translator shows "Siege" photographs from 1939 to more Poles. Tram stop. Market, fruit and vegetable stands, balloons. MS, grand building, Hotel Bristol, where JB and other foreigners with neutral passports assembled on Sept. 21, 1939 immediately prior to getting out of Warsaw. Pedestrians pass front windows of the hotel. Cut to another intersection, and then another with people entering a travel agency and CUs of posters of Budapest and an international music festival in the windows. (Building is the one JB photographed in 1939 with sandbags and "Wagonslits" sign in Photo Archives W/S 47396). Traffic and pedestrians cross a bridge, Polish flags hang from the posts, homes in BG. View from afar of a train crossing a bridge and the city along the Vistula river. Three nurses look at photos of a bombed hospital from "Siege" book, the shots that follow include Julien Bryan in the frame. The nurses (Sisters Zurawska, Helena, and Genowefa) remembered the day when the maternity ward of the Catholic Hospital of the Transfiguration was bombed in 1939, which JB photographed (Photo Archives W/S 47210). LS, MSs of the new city hospital with 800 beds. Man on crutches. Another view of tram traffic on a bridge and Warsaw.
Subjects
- HOTELS
- RIVERS
- POSTWAR
- CHURCHES
- NURSES
- BOOKS
- RUINS
- STREETS
- MARKETS
- CLERGY
- FLAGS
- POLES
- RELIGIOUS SERVICES
- BRYAN, JULIEN
Places
- Warsaw, Poland
Genre
- Film
- Unedited.