Daily life in southeastern, northeastern, and central Poland, 1936

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. TRIMS beginning with a quick glimpse of store fronts in the Jewish quarter in Krakow. This is followed by several shots of architecture in Warsaw, then a CU of an incense burner in a Catholic procession in Lowicz. The scene then returns to Warsaw: street scene, kiosk, poster advertising a theatrical performance. MS, policeman on horseback, using the horse as crowd control, people are gathered. CU molten zinc being smelted in a furnace at the Giesche Mine and Refinery in Katowice. LS, Gdansk, establishing shot along the waterway. MCU and CU of dockworkers in Gdynia, loading materials onto ships for transport. There is a lumber yard at the docks. Staged scenes of a village family in Zakopane, Poland. Men and women are present, cooking, eating, talking, doing household chores. CUs of bread and cheese being cut and served. MS, Katowice, workers exiting the mine. CU of elevator in operation going down to mine shaft, workers exit elevator into mine. VS of the miners at work, chipping away at the walls of the cave with pick axes, etc. Return to CUs and MCUs of Catholic holiday procession through the streets of Lowicz, followed by a quick glimpse of a paddle boat docked alongside the Vistula river in Krakow. The Wawel castle is visible in BG.