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.
This is an incomplete version of the film"Sieg" and does not have Julien Bryan's soundtrack. Warsaw 1939. Julien Bryan introduction to camera. Civilians digging ditches, constructing blockades, dead horses. Poles washing outdoors in makeshift homes, food lines. Bundles of belongings on baby carriage. Poles walking with bundles. Interior - damage to Kodak film laboratory where Bryan's films were being developed. Fires, church destruction, priests, relics, etc. INT, hospital damage. Open field, women gathering potatoes, injured by strafing of Luftwaffe planes. Poles gather in front of town ruins, VAR CUs, people in distress.
Siege of Warsaw