Daily life in Russia

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. INT, shots through a window of a window washer. EXT, city scenes from a moving tram. EXT, men digging up a road. Cows pass a barn. Young boys put potatoes in a bucket. CU, trams drive by, a busy town square. People board and exit a tram. Men read newspaper board. Various shots of little children. Man meticulously shines a woman's shoes. Street scenes. CU, fish in a tank. Storefront. Rowboat on a river. Men buy beer from a stand in the square. CU, statue of a rearing horse and a man holding the lead. Postmen deliver mail. Peasants/farmers shovel and load hay. Storefront of a housewares store. Young salesgirl/vendor sells something on the street. Elaborate Russian Orthodox church. Military vehicle. Construction on buildings. Crowd of people stand outside a storefront waiting for a performance of musical puppets. Eyeglass shop.