Shooting Captured Insurgents - 1898

American movie. "A file of Spanish soldiers line up the Cubans against a blank wall and fire a volley. The flash of rifles and drifting smoke make a very striking picture." - from the Edison Catalog.
A contingent of soldiers marches forward with a group of prisoners. The officer in charge directs that the prisoners be lined up against a wall, to be executed. He gestures with his sword as the soldiers take aim, and then prepares to give the order to shoot.
Of course, it would've been dangerous and extremely difficult to film actual events during the Spanish-American War. So the Edison Manufacturing Company did the next best thing by re-enacting an event for this short.
Even though it wasn't "real", I can only imagine how disturbing it would have been back in 1898 to see people being lined up and killed. Due to its gritty, documentary-like feel, it is still somewhat unsettling to view even today. This short has been preserved by the Library of Congress and I viewed it as one of the unadvertised bonus shorts found in the DVD boxed set of "The Movies Begin - A Treasury of Early Cinema, 1894-1913".