Translating the Americas Through Film: Julien Bryan and the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs

In 1940, Julien Bryan, a well-known photographer and documentarian, was hired by the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (OCIAA) to film a series of 23 educational movies and documentaries on Latin America. The aim of these films was to bring to light the ideas of the Good Neighbor Policy. The OCIAA was created as an agency to carry out cultural diplomacy and solidarity within the region to counter the influence of Axis powers in Latin America. Among the many cultural aspects the OCIAA managed, film became a tool that the office actively developed, funding directors’ tours through South America and films about specific countries. Documentaries and educational films, like the ones Bryan directed, aimed to strengthen relationships among the peoples of the Americas by presenting the human and cultural sides of the nations.

This poster will explore Julien Bryan’s work for the OCIAA, examining how these productions helped translate the other American republics for other publics across the Continent. The element of translation is key because, for many spectators, these films offered a chance to encounter new cultures and ways of life. They also had a strong exoticizing element regarding the way an other is being constructed through film. That translation also included an element of how the OCIAA was enacting diplomacy. Thus, this poster aims to show the various elements at play in Bryan’s work for the Office. The sources, besides the films themselves, come from NARA and the Rockefeller Archive Center.

Given that the focus of this work is on Julien Bryan’s films, the poster will allow me to emphasize the more visual aspects of this research. The poster will be organized as follows:

Section 1: Context of the OCIAA – World War II.

Section 2: Short approach to the concept of ‘translation’ and ‘cultural diplomacy’

Section 3: Bio of Julien Bryan and his involvement with the OCIAA. This section will include pictures, such as Bryan’s contract with the OCIAA, as well as other pertinent visual information of Bryan’s on-site filming in the Americas.

Section 4: The films (general ideas of themes, how many films, places filmed, places where the films were shown). This section will include charts I developed to systematize the information found in the archives.

Section 5: Focus on the films (two or three) that the archives hold more information about. This section will include stills of the films. The main topics explored through the images will be how other Americans are represented.

Section 6: References (sources and bibliography)