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.
Reel 3A Animated map. Goats grazing in brick ruins. Man approaches a gravesite with flowers. LS, overview of massive destruction in the city of Warsaw - bombed buildings. MS, then CUs of the monument in the former Warsaw ghetto to Jews who died in the 1943 uprising. HAS, construction site, rebuilding Poland, river in BG, crane. VAR views of schoolchildren walking along the sidewalk and playing at school. HAS, policeman directing traffic (pedestrians, automobiles, trams, horse/buggy) with Warsaw in the distance. School. Shop amidst ruins (pile of bricks). CU, shop sign (bookstore). Large building adjacent to new construction. Children walk to school. CU, shoulder patch of a Danish soldier. Reconstruction of Warsaw from a moving vehicle. CU, architectural model of Warsaw. INT, classroom, a priest lectures to boys and girls seated at desks. AS of vehicular traffic. A man sells wares on the street, a girl buys ice cream. Pan, Warsaw. Polish military teens pass wooden crosses along (assembly-line style) at a cemetery. Closer shots of bombed buildings. Now in a village, CUs of Polish children - looking at camera, digging in the dirt, and eating dumplings. Mountain-side views of the town, a man dressed as a bear stands along a sidewalk greeting villagers. High shot of open jeep with people entering a village, boys performing a drill, woman doing laundry in her yard, bucolic mountains, and three pedestrians. Quick shot of"Fryzje" [barber] sign, followed by ruins of Warsaw, shells of buildings. People look out"windo" in shelled building, woman with a water pail, children playing in ruins, geese, Julien Bryan's car, ruins located adjacent to the river, children playing games.
Rebuilding Warsaw, probably in 1947