Forgotten Silver

Forgotten Silver presents itself as a documentary about Colin McKenzie, a New Zealand film pioneer born in rural surroundings in 1888. The film follows the discovery of a cache of early nitrate films and the investigation into the life of a man who, according to the account given, devised colour film, synchronized sound and camera movement before better-known inventors did the same. His ambitious biblical epic, shot in the New Zealand bush with a recreated ancient Jerusalem, becomes the centrepiece of the search. The premise and main conflict lie in the gap between McKenzie's supposed achievements and his obscurity, which the film sets out to explain.

Peter Jackson directed and co-wrote the film with Costa Botes, and it sits between The Frighteners and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, as the sixth of the fifteen features he has directed. Sue Rogers produced it for WingNut Films with backing from the New Zealand Film Commission and NZ on Air. Jeffrey Thomas narrates, while Jackson and Botes appear as themselves alongside Beatrice Ashton as Hannah McKenzie, Leonard Maltin and Harvey Weinstein.

The film runs just under an hour and blends comedy with the television movie format. On IMDb it holds a critics' rating of 7.5 out of 10 from ten reviews, while on TMDB it has a 7.2 rating from 128 votes, indicating a modest but favourable reception from both critics and viewers.