See
Mormon Film: Key Films of the First Wave
This proto-newsreel item is the first recorded filming of Latter-day Saints. It took place within the milieu of the Spanish-American War, the first American armed conflict after Utah statehood and therefore the first with extensive Utahn (LDS) involvement (although the Mormon Battalion served as a smaller precursor to Mormons in the American military). In addition to many units which served in the Philippines, one company of Rough Riders--or Rocky Mountain Riders--served in the Cuban arena (though it is likely a few company members were of other denominations, the vast majority were LDS). Their immediate (Mormon) commander was John Q. Cannon, son of President George Q. Cannon, first counselor in the First Presidency, and the leader of all the Rocky Mt. companies was the non-Mormon Col. Jay L. Torrey. They were mustered on May 15, 1898 at Fort Russell, Wyoming and travelled east by rail, a derailment enroute injuring Torrey and temporarily putting Cannon in command of all the companies. They were stationed in Jacksonville, Florida, awaiting combat deployment, in July when Theodore Roosevelt made his famous charge up San Juan Hill. This allowed them, however, to be on hand for a film crew from the New York City-based American Mutoscope Company (later better known as American Mutoscope and Biograph) who came to record several items of the Rough Riders for, presumably, national distribution. It is likely that Cannon himself was in the shot, and though we don't know which others, or all of them, were included--the film is presumed lost today--we do have a complete listing of the members of the company (see Cast). The fact that American Mutoscope would make a patriotic picture of what was obviously a "Mormon" company showed a great leap in LDS public relations in America a mere eight years after the Manifesto. This, of course, was the main reason Wilford Woodruff and other Church leaders supported Utah involvement in the war, making this film--which we don't know if he ever saw before his death that September--a landmark piece. Such a positive stance would not last in the ensuing decades, as the 1900s-1920s have often been called "the anti-Mormon film era," beginning with American Mutoscope and Biograph's 1905
A Trip to Salt Lake City (the second known film with LDS content). --Randy Astle