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 7A. Colorful flowers. Mother sitting with children on a park bench in Warsaw. New housing in Warsaw. Reconstruction. Steel mill. Workers leave mill through gates. Cranes at work, INT coal burning. INTs, Julien Bryan with Jozefa Drzewowska (age 72), photographed clasping her hands in prayer in 1939 and used on the cover of"Sieg" (Photo Archives W/S 47403). Jozefa's daughter and grandchildren. Julien Bryan with Apolonia and village children distributing contents of a CARE package. Apolonia Wiktorzak was photographed in 1939 holding a loaf of bread, now 65 years old (Photo Archives W/S 47371). He gives Apolonia a scarf and fur jacket. Jozefa stands at the doorway of her apartment building while her daughter and grandchildren exit (repeated shots). Farmland in Poland. EXT, café with patrons in Krakow. Market, Barbican stairs, crowded square and church. HAS, beach. MS, castle of Polish kings (Wawel) in Krakow, closer view of tourists. Visiting Auschwitz concentration camp, visitors walk under"Arbeit Macht Fre" iron gate. LS, amusements along river - children playing. INTs, CU, woman praying at Catholic mass. INTs, nursery school, cute toddlers at play. EXT, patrons sit at café tables (again), talking, smoking. Flower stalls at the outdoor marketplace. Reel 7B. CU, red metal sign for a medical clinic in Warsaw. HAS, repeated LSs, of the city of Warsaw from a lookout tower. Series of sequences with Mrs. Waclawa Ladziak, her daughter Janina, her son-in-law Eugeniusz Motyka, and her 3 year old grandson. Mrs. Ladziak was photographed with her infant daughter Janina by Julien Bryan in September 1939 crossing a bridge with their belongings to escape Nazi bombing (Photo Archives W/S 47230). INTs, apartment, Janina brushes her hair and puts on makeup at a vanity, books arranged for camera, bookshelf, radio. Her husband shaves. CUs, Waclawa with her grandson, looking at a family photo album. EXT, Kazimiera Mika's small house at 2 Dalibora in Warsaw. Kazimiera was photographed by JB in 1939 mourning the death of her older sister, who was killed in a field in Warsaw during a German air raid (Photo Archvives W/S 50897). CU, Kazimiera's son Andrew meets his father, a tram driver, on the sidewalk and walks into their home. Janina (seen earlier) and her husband walk through Warsaw, looking at posters, looking at newspaper article on"Sieg" photos from 1939, including the photograph of her as a baby. The family then walks across a bridge (recreation of the 1939 scene). CU of Jozefa (seen earlier), praying in field adjacent to the small church. JB with Jozefa and the priest, small church in BG. Large group of schoolchildren walk along a road with their teacher. MSs, Julien Bryan talks to Ryszard Pajewski (now a truck driver) who he filmed in 1939 (boy sitting in rubble, Photo Archives W/S 31324). Of this encounter in 1958, JB wrote"he remembered my gray suit" Children at the school playground, playing with toys outdoors, putting on coats, dancing in a circle. Big building in the city of Warsaw, street cleaning, traffic. Outdoor marketplace, CUs of vegetables. A different shot of school-children crossing the street. Balbina Szymanska (mother of the twins killed on September 5, 1944) with her husband and children standing on a pile of ruins in Warsaw, some with JB. Balbina was photographed immediately after giving birth to twins at the bombed maternity hospital in 1939 (Photo Archives W/S 47218). JB shows a crowd his"Sieg" book, next to his automobile. Good CUs of Poles. Brief shot of Stefan Radlinski (in light jacket) shaking hands with a Polish civilian. He was JB's interpreter during the siege of Warsaw in 1939.
Bryan locates individuals he filmed during the German siege of Warsaw