Forgotten Silver

Some years ago, in a family friend's shed, New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson discovered a wealth of film footage - that was believed to be lost - by the forgotten New Zealand film pioneer Colin McKenzie. In 1900, when he was twelve years old, this farmer's son assembled his first film camera. A few years later he recorded an important historical event: a couple of months before the Wright brothers did, compatriot Richard Pierce succeeded in getting an aircraft in the air. As early as 1908 McKenzie developed a way to record images and sound simultaneously, which led to his sound-film the warrior season. Some years later he shot his first colour film on Haiti. Film historian Leonard Maltin, producer Harvey Weinstein and actor Sam Neill recall a filmmaker whose rehabilitation they consider to be the most interesting cinematographic event of the past fifty years.