Julien Bryan collection
Extent and Medium
boxes
25
Creator(s)
- Julien H. Bryan
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 Soviet Union. 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 Kraków 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 within days of Germany's invasion of Poland in Sept. 1939 and remained throughout the German siege of the city, photographing and filming what would become America's first cinematic glimpse of the start of World War II. 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.
Archival History
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Acquisition
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the Julien Bryan Archive
The collection was donated to the Museum by Sam Bryan and the International Film Foundation, Inc. on Sept. 10, 2003.
Scope and Content
Collection consists of Julien Bryan's United States passport; scrapbook of newspaper clippings; and announcements and reviews of Julien Bryan's "Nazi Germany" traveling lecture; an envelope of duplicate newspaper clippings on "Siege" (of Warsaw); and a scrapbook of articles written on Julien Bryan's "Siege of Warsaw" film and book.
System of Arrangement
Arranged in a single series.
People
- Bryan, Julien H. (Julien Hequembourg), 1899-1974.
- Julien H. Bryan