Factory workers in Poland, postwar
Creator(s)
- Sam Bryan and International Film Foundation
- Julien H. Bryan (Camera Operator)
- 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
INT barbershop, men getting shaved. CU men being shaved. CU woman washing her hands, factory in BG. Woman exits coat room as load of wound wool rolls by. Men receive bowls of food from women in cafeteria kitchen. CU men and women exchangetickets for bowls of food. INT machines winding spools of wool. Women working at the machines. Man repairing one of the machines, CUs. A different machine. CU as machine combs the wool. Wool on spool. Women load spools of wound wool onto machines. Workers seated at tables in a cafeteria eating. CUs. Machining metal parts. CU men at the machines. Man checks the dimensions of the metal parts. Men seated at tables making shoes. CU, one of the shoemakers is missing a leg. CU, man uses a comb to hold his hair back while he works. Schedule of workday. One of the hours labeled “TECHNIKA REKL.” Men work with pen and paper at desks, a supervisor walks around. CU men at desks drawing three dimensional letters, one of the men has a prosthetic leg.
Subjects
- WORKERS
- POLES
- EATING
- POLAND
- WOMEN
- FACTORIES
- REHABILITATION
- MACHINERY
- FOOD
Places
- , Poland
Genre
- Film
- Unedited.