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.
Julien Bryan visited Poland and Russia in the winter of either 1945-1946 or 1946-1947. We believe it was the latter, as a photograph Bryan sent to his wife is labeled:"Taken in Kiev, Jan 2, 194".
Reel 3A Cemetery, tombstones. Women placing flowers and candles at graves. MS, cemetery with men, women, and children. Wooden crosses flanked with miniature Polish flags and flowers. Official military burial with flag-draped coffins, Polish soldiers, wooden crosses/wreaths, and a priest. Cut to Catholic church in the ruins of Warsaw. Poles exit and enter through an underground entrance marked in Polish with"Wejscie do Kosciol"[the entrance to the church] (Photo Archives W/S 46323). MS, Warsaw street scenes in ruins.
Cemetery and church in postwar Warsaw