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.
The Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) was a U.S. government agency set up in 1948 to administer the European recovery program (Marshall Plan). EXT man on a horse-drawn mower in a field. Men clear grass by hand with scythes. Farm building and truck. Women hoeing. CU women stop to talk. Men load hay onto a truck. Truck drives away. Courtyard with men moving large sacks. Men and women work on farm machinery and bag grain. (04:09) Slate reads “DAY 3 EXT 1 ECA.” CU root vegetables. Three horses pull a cart full of root vegetables as a man walks alongside. Truck dumpsload of root vegetables. Farm machinery and truck in field, harvesting. CU “CATERPILLAR” on side of tractor. More slates and different farming machinery. LS tractor in a field with farm buildings behind it. Silhouette of farm machinery at sunset.
Recovery activities sponsored by the Economic Cooperation Administration