Forgotten Silver
This was originally screened as a genuine documentary to an unsuspecting New Zealand public, and was only revealed to be a hoax a few days afterwards.,The film implies that Colin invented the close-up around 1912, but the earliest close-ups date from around 1903, nine years earlier.,The hoax of this film is carried on into the credits. Cast members Beatrice Ashton (Hannah McKenzie) and Sarah McLeod (Mae Belle) are credited as Research Assistants. Other bit players are credited as research assistants, production advisers, and are otherwise given phony credits.,Edited from Dewars Scotch Whiskey (1897),At this stage of his career, Peter Jackson was making strikingly original pictures, but they were mainly novelty pictures. Meet the Feebles: came up with the idea of taking muppets, and having them swear and do vulgar things. Bad Taste is superlative exploitation horror-comedy that claims to be the "grossest thing you'll ever see." Braindead was also horror comedy, and Forgotten Silver is a mockumentary about a lost New Zealand film pioneer.

Like the best mockumentaries (This is Spinal Tap), this absolutely relies on its facade of being real: to air in this, Jackson has recruited some impressive real-life movie figures, like Harvey Weinstein, Leonard Maltin and Sam Neill. As a testament to how well it puts up this facade, a couple of reviews on this site tell of people who saw it and for years thought it was real.

The persistent joke in this film is that a filmmaker would have remained entirely unknown until the making of this documentary, yet have secretly beaten every other film innovator to their discoveries: in the course of his life inventing the camera, the first feature film, the first film with a cast of thousands... i won't spoil the rest for you, but its great fun.

The other persistant joke is for locals (and the rest of us can have a good giggle too) that it was a New Zealander doing all this.

Sends up the obsession over lost films and filmmakers, as well as the entire of film history, no less. Yet it also taps into the excitement of invention, and the excitement of film discovery.

You'll get the most out of this if you know a little film history yourself, and know the real eras certain things were invented and who invented them - in which case you'll get an extra joy out of this, yet this knowledge is not necessary: Jackson slips in the dates of the actual innovations, like the first talkies and the first sound films, so you don't need to bring anything to the movie to enjoy it.,