1. Julien Hequembourg Bryan was an American photographer, filmmaker, and documentarian who documented the daily life in Poland, Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany between 1935 and 1939, in the leadup to and early days of the Second World War.
15 Facts About Julien Bryan
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Julien Bryan was honored with a Decoration of Honor Meritorious for Polish Culture during his last visit in Poland for showing the truth about the Invasion of Poland.
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Julien Bryan graduated from Princeton University in 1921 and finished Union Theological Seminary, though he chose not to be ordained as a minister.
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Julien Bryan funded his travels by giving slideshow lectures about countries he visited and by selling his films to various companies including ERPI.
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Julien Bryan shot over 25,000 feet of film for Inside Nazi Germany, one of the first American anti-Nazi films.
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Julien Bryan is credited as the only foreign journalist in Warsaw at that time.
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Julien Bryan managed to hide some of his films in souvenir gas mask containers collected by a fellow traveler from the US, and by one account he hid some movies by wrapping them around his torso.
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Julien Bryan produced in 1940 as a short documentary film Siege, released by RKO Radio Pictures.
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In 1940 Julien Bryan was hired by the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs to make a series of 23 educational movies on Latin American culture and customs.
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In 1958 Julien Bryan revisited Poland and published one hundred of his 1939 photographs from Warsaw.
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Julien Bryan wrote about his experiences in Warsaw: 1939 siege, 1959 Warsaw Revisited published in 1959 in Poland.
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In 1945, Julien Bryan started the International Film Foundation and for the remainder of his career he made short documentary films for the school market.
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Julien Bryan died in 1974, just two months after receiving a medal from the Polish government for his still photography.
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In 2003 Sam Julien Bryan donated both his father's still and motion picture footage of wartime Europe to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
15.
The role of unnamed "American journalist" based on Julien Bryan was portrayed by Jack Recknitz.