Disturbing yet enthralling

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Maybe i have become a biased Peter Jackson fan. The LOTR movies i consider the greatest achievement in the history of film. But this little gem is just so well crafted. I was lucky to just stumble upon it while zapping through the channels some 8-9 years ago. Thinking this was an interesting documentary about a person i had never heard of before (always been a great fan of documentaries). I guess this is an unlikely, but perfect, situation to watch it in. Thinking it is for real. As the movie went along, i frequently was going "incredible - why have i not heard of this man before" .. and a few times i went "this cant be true". But at exactly those moments a famous person (like Sam Neil) pops up and explain about this person as if he did exist, which kept me believe the story. I have to admit .. i believed the story till the very end. This was one of the great moments in my movie watching "career". I was lucky i saw it as if it was real. Knowing that it is fake i guess makes it at lot less interesting.

This movie was originally made for New Zealand TV. The idea behind this movie was basically to fool the whole nation! Peter Jackson and his fellow companions planned out that they should try to make up a story about a formerly unknown New Zealandic film creator. The plot was that they had found some "lost" tapes containing loads of material which the unknown film creator had made. Jackson and his crew started to create the scenes which the film creator supposedly had made back in as early as around year 1900. The rest of the story around this man was brilliantly made up, and they even got Harvey Weinstein (a infamous Hollywood producer) and actor Sam Neill to participate in the movie, understating the fact that this formerly unknown film creator was a true genius and a undiscovered talent of a world class! The plot, the setting and everything is so well made and funny, I couldn't believe I had been neglecting this jewel of a film for so many years! Eventually, when it was aired in 1995, everyone thought it was a sensation. No one asked themselves if it actually was possible that such a "big name" had remained unknown. History books were about to be changed! But then Jackson and his companions told the secret. The result was tremendous! Jackson became the most hated man on New Zealand. Despite of all this, it's a great movie that show you that everything is possible. Peter Jackson's directing in this movie is really good, as well as the script is very, very good. Without a doubt a movie that deserves a place in history as one of the greatest ever!

Documentary is all about taking real life and shaping it into a story. 'Forgotten Silver' suggests that real part doesn't even have to be real, as long as the story's good.I watched this again tonight - probably the 4th or 5th time I've seen it since it was first screened as an (allegedly) true doco back in 1996. Despite knowing the whole thing was cod, I was quite surprised to find tears in my eyes as NZ pioneer film-maker Colin McKenzie accidentally filmed his own death in Spain, so drawn was I into the story.Once you strip away the hype over the hoax factor, what's left is just a great story about a struggling film maker facing and almost overcoming insurmountable obstacles to create a work of mad genius. Anyone expecting belly laughs from 'Forgotten Silver' is probably going to be disappointed, because viewed as a story, this isn't a comedy - it's a tragedy. It's no wonder so many people were sucked into believing it when it first screened - the Colin McKenzie saga has an emotional depth which is heartbreaking.Bonus points for a brilliant musical score, some superb technical effects (especially the corroded, bubbling, self-destructing nitrate film; most filmmakers would have settled for a couple of cliché tramlines to make the footage look old), and the gorgeous Thomas Robbins as Colin McKenzie.

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.