Forgotten Silver (1995)
March 16, 2023 12:05 PM - Subscribe

[TRAILER] A forgotten Peter Jackson film? Yep. Co-written and co-directed by Jackson and Costa Botes, this mockumentary purports to tell the story of "forgotten" New Zealand filmmaker Colin McKenzie, and the rediscovery of his lost films, which presenter Peter Jackson claims to have found in an old shed. McKenzie is presented as the first and greatest innovator of modern cinema, single-handedly inventing the tracking shot (by accident), the close-up (unintentionally), and both sound and color film years before their historically documented creation. The film also shows fragments of an epic Biblical film, Salome, supposedly made by McKenzie in a giant set in the forests of New Zealand, and a "computer enhancement" of a McKenzie film proving that New Zealander Richard Pearse was the first man to invent a powered aircraft, several months before the Wright Brothers.

Originally aired on New Zealand's TVONE, and promoted as an actual documentary (although revealed as a hoax at the end.)

Currently available for digital purchase or rental via Vimeo, streaming on YouTube, or via the Internet Archive.

Unsavory content advisory: one of the film's talking heads in the fake interviews is Harvey Weinstein.
posted by DirtyOldTown (6 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
I wrote about this when Get Back was released!
posted by pxe2000 at 1:34 PM on March 16, 2023 [1 favorite]


I think you'll find that's "pioneer," Mr. Jackson.

Very sloppy. I hope this doesn't harm your future career as a filmmaker.
posted by Naberius at 5:36 PM on March 16, 2023


Forgotten? I own the DVD! That I bought in... checks records... 2004? Good grief.

In anycase, a fun film (aside from Weinstein's presence).
posted by Ashwagandha at 6:17 PM on March 16, 2023


I watched this when it first appeared on NZ television. As an impressionable teenager, I was completely suckered in. I don't recall it being revealed as a hoax until the next day, which was enough time to make a bit of a fool of myself at school telling everyone about the amazing documentary I had just seen.
posted by Paragon at 8:49 PM on March 16, 2023 [2 favorites]


I've spent half the day wondering in the back of my mind whether the DVD I read the back cover of sometime in my younger days was this or some genuine compilation of older-film-stock fragmentary pieces.
posted by praemunire at 8:54 PM on March 16, 2023


Silly.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 8:18 AM on March 19, 2023


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