Forgotten Silver.

Directed and written by Peter Jackson and Costa Botes. DVD, B&W and color, 80 mins. Distributed by First Run Features, 153 Waverly Place, New York, NY 10014.

Forgotten Silver is a hilarious example of a developing global film genre, the dockumentary' or faked documentary film. What New Zealand filmmakers Peter Jackson (Bad Taste, Heavenly Creatures) and Costa Botes have managed to create is a brilliantly sly cinematic 'lie.' The focus is on a 'forgotten' New Zealand filmmaker, Colin McKenzie, whom this 'documentary' purports created many firsts in film history, forcing us to revise film history as we thought we knew it. Thus Jackson and Botes fake film footage and include interviews with Leonard Maltin, Sam Neill, Harvey Weinstein of Miramax, and other 'real' authorities to convince us of their amazing 'discovery.'

The film itself is worth the price of the DVD, but also included are informative interviews, deleted scenes, a 'making-of documentary, a directors' commentary, and coverage of the outrage the film created when it was aired on New Zealand television in 1977 with no clue given that it was a clever fraud. As the film's editor Michael Horton comments, the filmmakers were well aware that they were almost inviting angry viewers to come after them with guns! "This film is not a little lie, but a very big lie," comments Horton with a wry laugh.

"A work of demented genius," is a blurb on the DVD jacket from The Seattle Times, and yet it is more: it is a tribute to the very power of film to deceive us when handled by masters of the craft. Given the revolution of low-budget editing and video equipment, Forgotten Silver is also an inspiration to aspiring filmmakers who can now create such effects as 'old film' and 'lost worlds' on no budget at all. During the interviews with Peter Jackson, for instance, we learn that the lost-movie set for McKenzie's biblical epic, Salome, that was supposedly abandoned deep in the wilds of the South Island, was actually shot by Jackson near the center of Wellington by using a lot of imported weeds and bushes and careful angles and closeups!

Actual footage from old New Zealand films is also used, thus making the film seem even more real, especially to those in its country of origin. In this regard, Jackson explains in one interview that it is a homage in many ways to old New Zealand filmmakers who, for instance, actually traveled from town to town shooting comedies and then premiering them for the locals.

While we can understand the outrage in New Zealand surrounding the original, straight-faced presentation of the film, ultimately we realize that is a grand prank. As far as the simple pleasures of pure mockery go, Forgotten Silver is a delightfully subversive entertainment.