Postwar Poland
Creator(s)
- Sam Bryan and International Film Foundation
- Julien H. Bryan (Camera Operator)
- Eugene Cenkalski (Director)
Biographical History
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.
Eugene Cenkalski was a screenwriter and director. During the war, Cenkalski worked for the Polish government in England and the United States, producing and editing war film for Poland. After the war, he and his wife Christina settled In Lodz and collaborated on rebuilding the Polish film industry. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1209418.pdf
Scope and Content
A partially edited film sequence about a Polish family in postwar conditions. INT A young boy picking up and arranging his school books. CU Boy doing school work. Man (the father?) enters the room and shows a box to the boy, boy shadow boxes, man takes boy by the ear and they leave together. CU Boy shadow boxing as man pinches his ear. CU Man speaking. In the kitchen, a woman (the mother?) lights the stove, the man enters and she passes him a bucket as he leaves. Two boys run down stairs, pick up and open the box, then leave through a doorway. CU Two boys opening the box. CU Cigarettes inside the box. Boys hiding the box in a pile of lumber. Man opening the door and picking up the box from the lumber pile. Boys placing the box in the lumber pile and closing the door. 3:35 Woman walks into a room holding a cup of tea. Boy walks into the room and begins eating while looking at a book at the table. Boy reads and eats. Textbook and magazine with a boxer on the cover. Boy enters room and takes away the magazine. The two boys begin roughhousing and leave. Man puts a child in a crib. He reads the boxing magazine and shakes his head. Woman (the mother?) arrives home. Little boy (seen earlier) opens door. Father sits at table with young child on his lap. Boy comes in and the younger child points out a mark on his cheek.
Note(s)
At the time of the filming, Julien Bryan was working under contract for the International Relief Organization/UNRRA and tasked with capturing images of Europe rebuilding. The finished films were intended for an international [European] audience, often screened under the auspices of the US Department of State.
See RG-60.7124 for similar shots.
Subjects
- POLAND
- CHILDREN
- POLES
- BRYAN, JULIEN
- REHABILITATION
- FAMILIES
Places
- , Poland
Genre
- Film
- Unedited.