1. Forgotten Silver (Peter Jackson & Costa Botes, 1995)
Forgotten Silver is a brilliantly deceptive spoof documentary by Kiwi filmmakers Peter Jackson & Costa Botes which combines the pseudo documentary and found footage concepts into a convincingly constructed mockumentary hoax, perpetrated against the unsuspecting Kiwi masses. While actually a mockumentary, the film was not revealed to be fiction upon it's original broadcast on New Zealand television. It was originally slated to be broadcast as a hoax on April Fool's Day in 1995, but wasn't actually shown until late October and was portrayed to be the documentation of a very real, historically important, discovery. The story begins when Jackson discovers of a bunch of old film reels in his neighbors shed. The find is said to be a collection of lost films made by Colin McKenzie- a forgotten pioneer of Kiwi cinema. With this bank of new material, the two documentarians set out to uncover McKenzie's lost legacy using a combination of expert testimony, found footage and (totally fake) newspaper clippings to illustrate his story. It is claimed that McKenzie built his first camera using bike chains; designed the first steam-powered projector; manufactured his own film using stolen eggs; and was responsible for creating the world's first feature film and "talkie" (which was supposedly filmed in 1908, but was entirely in Chinese and not very popular with audiences at the time). In his essay'"Forgotten Silver', Craig Hight discusses some of the specific factors that Jackson & Botes had managed to exploit in order to pull off their con. He mentions how New Zealand had been celebrating 100 years of cinema in 1995, with the National Archive 'conducting a nationwide search for forgotten old films.' Nothing substantial was discovered by the Archive, but local newspapers and TV networks played along with the ploy, circulating a large amount of publicity about the supposedly found film that was going to re-write New Zealand into the annals of cinematic history. 'Colin McKenzie is a genius of cinema worthy to stand alongside the Lumiere Brothers, D.W. Griffith and Chaplin,' it was claimed. Jackson & Botes, "clearly intended that viewers approach the programme as though it were a documentary, drawing on certain well-established expectations concerning what the genre can offer, and in particular how documentary texts represent the historical world." They utilized the "expository" model, which, "offers an argument about the world, using onscreen narrators, and a variety of editing devices to present an array of evidence in an apparently balanced and objective way." Expert testimony is given by film critic Leonard Maltin, actor Sam Neill and media mogul Harvey Weinstein of Miramax Films, all of whom, 'argue for the historic importance of the films found and of the place of McKenzie himself as a pioneer in the history of film.' If the expository format wasn't enough to convince some viewers of the film's legitimacy, then this should have addressed any doubts they had left. Like with many of the previous examples, the filmmakers cleverly associated their tale within real cultural and historical contexts, which also helped reinforce claims of authenticity. Hight explains how they had incorporated cultural stereotypes that have become part of the Kiwi mythos, like the backyard inventor and jungle frontier aspects of the film. By doing this, Jackson & Botes made McKenzie's tale an individual example of the larger story that all Kiwi's feel they are a part of. They've also included a montage of found imagery from McKenzie's supposed war reportage, which is meant to act both as the earliest evidence of New Zealand's role in significant battles and to 'ground the documentary firmly in broader historical narratives.' The day after the film was aired, newspapers let the local population in on the hoax. It had elicited a range of responses. Some people were angry they had been fooled and demanded it not be allowed to happen again (the war of the worlds effect), while others respected how the film had been cleverly designed to exploit their tendency to trust the documentary format, and just laughed it off. I was personally fooled when I first saw this film and was about to rush off and steal a bunch of eggs (or chickens) so I could make some DIY organic emulsion! It's pretty damn convincing. Hight ends his essay by citing how some viewers had asked, 'if Jackson & Botes can make us believe in a fiction, then what are the implications for other film-makers, and other texts, which attempt to do this on a day-to-day basis?' This is exactly what Welles was asking in F for Fake, and hopefully what this list has managed to capture for you today!