The Spanish-American War in Motion Pictures

"This presentation features 68 motion pictures produced between 1898 and 1901 of the Spanish-American War and the subsequent Philippine Revolution. The Spanish-American War was the first U.S. war in which the motion picture camera played a role. These films were made by the Edison Manufacturing Company and the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company and consist of actualities filmed in the U.S., Cuba, and the Philippines, showing troops, ships, notable figures, and parades, as well as reenactments of battles and other war-time events. The Special Presentation presents the motion pictures in chronological order together with brief essays that provide a historical context for their filming."

Some of these are really hard to see or make out details, but I like'em for their historical value none the less. There are institutions that restore a degree of clearity to old films, and I hope they get around to these, assuming they haven't.

I can't see any young kids having any interest in these, unless they're like I was (and still am); really interested in the way things were. These films were made about a war just over a hundred years ago, but from my perspective, it wasn't that long ago because my grandmother was alive then, and in another 20 years, my mother would be born.

What's special about this war is that it had such a profound affect on the hundred years to follow. If you take time to look into it, you'll see that it was a war that wasn't even necessary. What was basically an accident, led to our prominence as a world power. Who would've thought that a hundred years later, we'd again be fighting in a war, this time Iraq, that's also considered to have been unnecessary, and will have a profound affect on the hundred years to come.