Classroom lessons, postwar
Creator(s)
- Julien H. Bryan (Camera Operator)
- Sam Bryan and International Film Foundation
- Eugene Cenkalski (Director)
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.
Eugene Cenkalski was a screenwriter and director. During the war, Cenkalski worked for the Polish government in England and the United States, producing and editing war film for Poland. After the war, he and his wife Christina settled In Lodz and collaborated on rebuilding the Polish film industry. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1209418.pdf
Scope and Content
Boys seated at desks in a classroom with a teacher. Boys stand up and pack up books. Two boys begin roughhousing, the teacher takes one of them by the arm and leads him away. Teacher talks to the boy while gesturing at a paper. Boy takes paper and leaves. CU, boy’s face. CU boys smiling, looking at the paper. CU boy’s feet swinging under the desk. Shot over the boy's shoulder of drawings of boxers. Teacher sees boys looking at paper during class and takes it away. CU hands holding bucket, tapping with a brush. (04:30) Woman in coat jogs across street and walks through a gate. Door with sign “ŻŁOBEK i PRZEDSKOLE.” Woman exits the gate holding a young child and is met by a man who takes the child from her. INT classroom, teacher takes away the paper with the boxing drawings from the boy. CU boys write in notebooks with pens. They tease one another. CU poster of workers with “KTO WYZEJ PODNIESIE PRODUKCJE?”.
Subjects
- WORKERS
- SIGNS/POSTERS
- CHILDREN
- REHABILITATION
- TEACHERS
- SCHOOLS
- POLAND
- POLES
Places
- , Poland
Genre
- Unedited.
- Film