Edited film sequence documenting war destruction and rebuilding of life in postwar Poland

Identifier
irn1005181
Language of Description
English
Alt. Identifiers
  • 2003.214
  • RG-60.7213
Dates
1 Jan 1948 - 31 Dec 1948
Level of Description
Item
Languages
  • Silent
Source
EHRI Partner

Creator(s)

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

EXT Camera pans across trees against the sky and then down across a cemetery. Flowers with damaged buildings in the BG. King John III Sobieski monument. CU Face of a bearded statue. 01:06 EXT Woman in black sitting on a park bench. Lit candles with a brick wall and image of the cross in the BG. Flowers. Title card reads “POWROT DO ZYCIA.” [Return to Life]. CU Street lamp. Polish soldier missing a leg and using crutches walks up a dark street. Concentration camp survivor? in striped uniform with a knapsack walks up a dark street. Street scenes of ruined buildings. Birds flying in ruins. A woman feeds the birds on the ruined street. A goat nurses her kid with a bombed out building in the BG. In the ruined street a man hoists a bucket. A little boy stacks tiles. Multiple shots of men laying bricks, shoveling, and sawing. A bucket being hoisted up. Men on scaffolding. Building with scaffolding. Finished building without scaffolding. 04:43 EXT Women sunbathing. Man diving off a high dive. Swimmers jumping in a pool. Splashing in the pool. Little girls playing with a small watering can in the pool. Many people jogging by the pool, hills in the distance. People splashing in the waves. A dog swimming. People playing in the waves with a beach and building in the BG. A building with the sign “DOM-GORNIKA” behind bushes and trees. Men playing with a ball on the beach. A woman running after the ball as it rolls away. Women walking past netting. Sequence repeats. 06:42 Train passing, people waving. CU Wheels of train. CU Women with their heads out the windows of the train. Hills and countryside, the train is passing. Man with a camera among trees, people run by behind him. People in bathing suits running on a path through the trees to a small lake. Running and splashing in the water. A woman pulling herself out of the water. A windmill and tree silhouetted against fog.

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.

  • See RG-60.7206 for similar shots.

Subjects

Places

Genre

This description is derived directly from structured data provided to EHRI by a partner institution. This collection holding institution considers this description as an accurate reflection of the archival holdings to which it refers at the moment of data transfer.