Forgotten SilverMovies like Forgotten Silver
- Key Features:
- Mockumentary, Historical revisionism, Lost film, Filmmaking, Early cinema, New Zealand, Biopic, Cult classic, Director-driven
- Tone:
- humorous, whimsical, satirical
- Target Audience:
- Film buffs, Cinephiles, Fans of mockumentaries, Viewers interested in film history
- Emotional Arc:
- ['Amusement → Intrigue → Revelation']
Forgotten Silver

The life story of Colin McKenzie, a forgotten pioneer of international cinema who was born in rural New Zealand in 1888.
Forgotten Silver
Fulton and Pepe's 2000 documentary captures Terry Gilliam's attempt to get The Man Who Killed Don Quixote off the ground. Back injuries, freakish storms, and more zoom in to sabotage the project.

Aspiring filmmakers Mel Funn, Marty Eggs and Dom Bell go to a financially troubled studio with an idea for a silent movie. In an effort to make the movie more marketable, they attempt to recruit a number of big name stars to appear, while the studio's creditors attempt to thwart them.

A small village in Huelva, Andalusia, Spain, 1936. Higinio and Rosa have been married only for a few months when the Civil War breaks out. Higinio, being afraid of possible reprisals from the rebel faction, decides to use a hole dug in his own house as a temporary hideout.

40 international directors were asked to make a short film using the original Cinematographe invented by the Lumière Brothers, working under conditions similar to those of 1895. There were three rules: (1) The film could be no longer than 52 seconds, (2) no synchronized sound was permitted, and (3) no more than three takes.

Documentary filmmaker Genya Tachibana has tracked down the legendary actress Chiyoko Fujiwara, who mysteriously vanished at the height of her career. When he presents her with a key she had lost and thought was gone forever, the filmmaker could not have imagined that it would not only unlock the long-held secrets of Chiyoko’s life... but also his own.

The Milanese Donato returns from Spain, animated by the serious intention to go back to being the "ras della fossa". Second chapter of the famous 80s cult.

Oregon, a small town near the sea, around 1870. Henry, a grieving man who aspires to preach as a way to overcome his unfortunate past, reunites with eccentric pioneer Samuel Alabaster, who has hired him to officiate at his marriage to the precious Penelope. What Henry ignores is that both must embark on a dangerous journey through the inhospitable wilderness to meet her.

When his long-lost brother resurfaces, Jacobo, desperate to prove his life has added up to something, looks to scrounge up a wife. He turns to Marta, an employee at his sock factory, with whom he has a prickly relationship.

A filmmaker facing an existential crisis goes on a vacation to a Mexican gay nudist beach, where he meets a social media celebrity who convinces him to collaborate with him on his new TV show. But one disappears and another embarks on a wild journey through Mexico City to find him.

When a Sumatran rat-monkey bites Lionel Cosgrove's mother, she's transformed into a zombie and begins killing (and transforming) the entire town while Lionel races to keep things under control.

After a psychic predicts his death, a small-time hoodlum named Julian hires a cheap documentary film crew to document the last few days of his mis-spent life. This is the film that pioneered the show of the same name.

When American author Nicholas brings in a cosmetologist named Kika to prepare the corpse of his recently deceased son, she inadvertently revives the young man, then falls in love with him. Forces conspire against the couple, though, as Nicholas wants Kika for himself.

The mostly true story of the legendary "worst director of all time", who, with the help of his strange friends, filmed countless B-movies without ever becoming famous or successful.

While filming in Transylvania, a crew unearths celluloid images of a woman’s murder and unleashes the wrath of evil spirits.

Drinking the tasty Folk Soda puts a spring in the 101 Year Old Man’s step and his next adventure takes him around the World and back to Sweden, during which time he is chased by the CIA, a Balinese debt collector and becomes an executive at a soft drink company.

A film set in the Spanish side of the Basque Country, beginning in the Carlist war of 1875 and ending during the Spanish Civil war of 1936. The film portrays how one single act of cowardice shapes the life of the next three generations of two families and fuels the intense rivalry which will span the next sixty-one years.

During World War I, a German U-boat sinks a British passenger ship and takes the survivors aboard. After getting lost in fog, the submarine surfaces near the unknown island of Caprona, a lost world where they find dinosaurs and Neanderthals.

Through the eyes of a British "documentary", this film takes a satirically humorous, and sometimes frightening, look at the history of an America where the South won the Civil War.

Toby, a cynical film director finds himself trapped in the outrageous delusions of an old Spanish shoe-maker who believes himself to be Don Quixote. In the course of their comic and increasingly surreal adventures, Toby is forced to confront the tragic repercussions of a film he made in his idealistic youth.

Werner Herzog gains exclusive access to film inside the Chauvet caves of Southern France, capturing the oldest known pictorial creations of humankind in their astonishing natural setting.

Artists in LA discover the work of forgotten Polish sculptor Stanislav Szukalski, a mad genius whose true story unfolds chapter by astounding chapter.

During WWII's crucial Battle of the Scheldt, the lives of a glider pilot, a Nazi soldier and a reluctant Resistance recruit tragically intersect.

Federico Fellini welcomes us into his world of film making with a mockumentary about his life in film, as a Japanese film crew follows him around.

Twenty years after three teenagers disappeared in the wake of mysterious lights appearing above Phoenix, Arizona, unseen footage from that night has been discovered, chronicling the final hours of their fateful expedition.

Michele is a Communist MP who loses his memory in a car crash—although nobody seems to notice. Over the course of a water polo match ahead of election day, he begins to remember his past life, revealing the picture of a man whose personal and political identity crisis mirrors the one of Italian communism.

Large doses of humor, ingenious nods to Spain's most recent national cinema, an artistic cast highly linked to comedy and a high reserve of surprises constitute the ingredients of this crazy comedy: Spanish Movie.

When actor David Harbour finds lost footage of his father's disastrous televised stage play of a literary classic, he uncovers shocking family secrets.

The true history of a collection of some 500 films dating from 1910s to 1920s, which were lost for over 50 years until being discovered buried in a sub-arctic swimming pool deep in the Yukon Territory, in Dawson City, located about 350 miles south of the Arctic Circle.

Who says being an undead creature of the night is easy? With that in mind, three ancient friends—centuries-old vampires Vulvus, the romantic and temperamental Lord Byron wannabe; Viago, the flamboyant 19th-century dandy; and Deacon, the rebellious 107-year-old youngster—invite a documentary crew to shed light on a vampire’s daily life. Starting from the fateful day of their eternal transformation, these modern-day blood-suckers don’t shy away from answering deeply personal questions about their quirky flatmate situation—after all, this is an interview, not just an excuse for a quick bite.Will we ever truly find out what vampires do in the shadows?

Two silent movie actors escape from their film. Forced to find a way to survive in the real world, they will only cause troubles to the people they will meet along the way.

When a devastating boat crash shipwrecks a group of friends in the jungles of an uncharted island, they are savagely picked off one-by-one by a cannibalistic enemy that evolution forgot.

Something is rotten at the Elsinore Brewery. Bob and Doug McKenzie (as seen on SCTV) help the orphan Pam regain the brewery founded by her recently-deceased father. But to do so, they must confront the suspicious Brewmeister Smith and two teams of vicious hockey players.

David Carr is a British Communist who is unemployed. In 1936, when the Spanish Civil War begins, he decides to fight for the Republican side, a coalition of liberals, communists and anarchists, so he joins the POUM militia and witnesses firsthand the betrayal of the Spanish revolution by Stalin's followers and Moscow's orders.

This comedic retrospective mixes archival footage and scripted sketches as it revisits all the dread — and occasional delight — that 2021 had to offer.

Don Sallust is the minister of the King of Spain. Being disingenuous, hypocritical, greedy and collecting the taxes for himself, he is hated by the people he oppresses. Accused by The Queen, a beautiful princess Bavarian, of having an illegitimate child to one of her maids of honor, he was stripped of his duties and ordered to retire to a monastery.

Vampire housemates try to cope with the complexities of modern life and show a newly turned hipster some of the perks of being undead.

In Victorian England, a fortune now depends on which of two brothers outlives the other—or can be made to have seemed to do so.

In 1992, teenager Sandi Tan shot Singapore's first indie road movie with her enigmatic American mentor Georges – who then vanished with all the footage. Twenty years later, the 16mm film is recovered, sending Tan, now a novelist in Los Angeles, on a personal odyssey in search of Georges' vanishing footprints.

Telly Paretta is a grieving mother struggling to cope with the loss of her 8-year-old son. She is stunned when her psychiatrist reveals that she has created eight years of memories about a son she never had. But when she meets a man who has had a similar experience, Telly embarks on a search to prove her son's existence, and her sanity.

A chronicle of the long career of American filmmaker Roger Corman, the most tenacious and ingenious low-budget producer and director in the US film industry, a pioneer of independent filmmaking and discoverer of new talent.

What really happened during Shakespeare's 'Lost Years'? Hopeless lute player Bill Shakespeare leaves his home to follow his dream.

An aged Charlie Chaplin narrates his life to his autobiography's editor, including his rise to wealth and comedic fame from poverty, his turbulent personal life and his run-ins with the FBI.

At the end of the 1950s in Africo, a small village in the southern valley of Aspromonte, a woman dies in childbirth because a doctor fails to arrive on time. No road connects Africo with the other villages. In the wake of this tragedy, all of Africo’s citizens -including children - abandon their usual occupations and unite to build their own road. Giulia, the new schoolteacher, comes from the North with a mission to teach standard Italian to help bring cultural cohesion with Africo and the rest of Italy. But she will have to contend with the local mafioso Don Totó, who is determined to ensure this the town remains cut off, and thus, under his power.

Tad is a celebrity archaeologist and adventurer just like his hero Max Mordon... in his dreams! In reality, Tad is a Chicago construction worker. One day, however, he is mistaken for a real professor and takes his place on a flight to Peru in search of the lost city of Paititi.

A hilarious collection of animated television commercials that were rejected because of their creator's failing grip on sanity.

A documentary about branding, advertising and product placement that is financed and made possible by brands, advertising and product placement.

Spain, 1939. In the last days of the Spanish Civil War, the young Carlos arrives at the Santa Lucía orphanage, where he will make friends and enemies as he follows the quiet footsteps of a mysterious presence eager for revenge.

Almería, Tabernas desert, Spain, 2002. Texas Hollywood is a dilapidated and dusty town where Western movies have not been shot for decades. Julián Torralba and his partners, veteran film stuntmen, survive there, recreating pathetic action scenes for the pleasure of the few foreign tourists who visit the isolated region.

After her boyfriend commits suicide, a young woman attempts to use the unpublished manuscript of a novel and a sum of money he left behind to reinvent her life.

John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam pay tribute to their late Monty Python colleague Graham Chapman in this hilarious, 3-D animated adaptation of Chapman's brazenly fictionalized life story.

A trio of accidental outlaws travel the length of New Zealand, protesting conformity and chasing lost love, with a posse of cops and a media frenzy in pursuit.

Arising out of the horror of the Spanish Civil War, a candidate for canonization is investigated by a journalist who discovers his own estranged father had a deep, dark and devastating connection to the saint's life.While researching the life of Josemaria Escriva, the controversial founder of Opus Dei, the young journalist Robert uncovers hidden stories of his estranged father Manolo, and is taken on a journey through the dark, terrible secrets of his family’s past.

Free adaptation of Machado de Assis' classic. The narrator is a rich dead man, who tells us about his life and times, making fun of both.

The story of the tortuous struggle against the silence of the victims of the dictatorship imposed by General Franco after the victory of the rebel side in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1975). In a democratic country, but still ideologically divided, the survivors seek justice as they organize the so-called “Argentinian lawsuit” and denounce the legally sanctioned pact of oblivion that intends to hide the crimes they were subjects of.

An exiled filmmaker finally returns to his home country where former mysteries and afflictions of his early life come back to haunt him once more.

Boy, an 11-year-old child and devout Michael Jackson fan who lives on the east coast of New Zealand in 1984, gets a chance to know his absentee criminal father, who has returned to find a bag of money he buried years ago.

A man wanders out of the desert not knowing who he is. His brother finds him, and helps to pull his memory back of the life he led before he walked out on his family and disappeared four years earlier.

Terry and Dean are lifelong friends who have grown-up together: shotgunning their first beers, forming their first garage band, and growing the great Canadian mullet known as "hockey hair". Now the lives of these Alberta everymen are brought to the big screen by documentarian Ferral Mitchener in an exploration of the depths of friendship, the fragility of life, growing up gracefully and the art and science of drinking beer like a man.

Oscar and Arthur are two actors without fortune who survive unemployment with a routine street, where one represents the thief and the other to the police. Thanks to this performance are "hired" by Mr. Mauricio Tavares to play a practical joke on dangerous Don Antonio Robledo, a senior executive who suffer a fictional kidnapping for later culminate in a surprise party.

One day, hospital orderlies, watching corpse in the morgue, recognize film director. Man, even though he died, he begins to remember his life. He made a career making movies, had numerous mistresses, but never realized their dreams. His life was interspersed with many setbacks that enfeebled him from the inside. Although he made a career in film, he was not happy with his life.

Greedy Baron Antonio Peletti refuses to give to his town the heredity left by his father, a box full of precious jewels, which he keeps for himself. The major and the rest of the townspeople therefore organize a trick at his expense: they'll make him believe he is dead, and, in a fake "afterlife", they'll try to convince him to finally show them where the money is hidden to save his soul.

The true story of a British effort to trick the Germans into weakening Sicily's defenses before the 1943 attack. A dead soldier is dressed as a British officer and outfitted with faked papers showing that the Allies were intending to invade occupied Greece. His body is put into the sea where it will ultimately drift ashore and the papers be passed along to German Intelligence.

An eclectic group of characters set sail on Captain Lansen’s leaky cargo ship in an attempt to escape their various troubles. When a violent storm strikes, the ship is swept into the Sargasso Sea and the passengers find themselves trapped on an island populated by man-eating seaweed, giant crabs and Spanish conquistadors who believe it’s still the 16th century.

After ending his long-term relationship, Antonio is sure that he can quickly get over Sofia. But nothing is as simple as it seems. And realizing the impossibility of controlling his own feelings, he begins to boycott them, using all sorts of contemporary palliative measures to free himself from the memories of his ex: cognitive psychoanalysis, prescription drugs, Tinder, among others. Ergo, Antonio will go through several tragicomic situations.

A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.

A washed up actor best known for playing the title character in the 1980s detective show "Mindhorn" must work with the police when a serial killer says that he will only speak with Detective Mindhorn, whom he believes to be real.

Memo lives on a remote Chilean sheep farm, hiding a beautiful singing voice from the outside world. A recluse with a glittery flair, he can't stop dwelling on the past, but what will happen once someone finally listens?

When renowned director Werner Herzog and fellow filmmaker Zak Penn set off to explore the legend of Scotland's Loch Ness monster, they uncover much more than they bargained for. Unexplained sightings of the creature and chaos among the crew create an uneasy feeling that things aren't what they seem.

Low-budget independent filmmaker Nick Reve tries to keep everything together as his production is plagued with an insecure actress, a megalomaniac star, a pretentious beret-wearing director of photography, and lousy catering.

Hong Kong action diva Maggie Cheung comes to France when a past-his-prime director casts her in a remake of the silent classic Les Vampires. Clad in a rubber catsuit and unable to speak a word of French, Cheung finds herself adrift in the insanity of the film industry…

After a young heiress is assaulted by a policeman, she seeks revenge by befriending the policeman’s mousy wife and introducing her to her circle of outrageous punk friends.

In Manhattan's Central Park, a film crew directed by William Greaves is shooting a screen test with various pairs of actors. It's a confrontation between a couple: he demands to know what's wrong, she challenges his sexual orientation. Cameras shoot the exchange, and another camera records Greaves and his crew. Sometimes we watch the crew discussing this scene, its language, and the process of making a movie. Is there such a thing as natural language? Are all things related to sex? The camera records distractions - a woman rides horseback past them; a garrulous homeless vet who sleeps in the park chats them up. What's the nature of making a movie?

When a billionaire entrepreneur impulsively decides to create an iconic movie, he demands the best. Renowned filmmaker Lola Cuevas is recruited to mastermind this ambitious endeavour. Completing the all-star team are two actors with massive talent but even bigger egos: Hollywood heartthrob Félix Rivero and radical theatre actor Iván Torres. Both are legends, but not exactly best friends. Through a series of increasingly eccentric trials set by Lola, Félix and Iván must confront not only each other but also their own legacies. Who will be left when the cameras finally start rolling?

Hapless Depression-era gangsters Al, John and Jack find out their boss wants to get rid of them and come up with a plan to sell him to the FBI, but Al's short-term memory loss could make it difficult.

The Topalović family has been in the burial business for generations. When the 150-year-old Pantelija dies, five generations of his heirs start to fight for the inheritance.

A New York University professor returns from a rescue mission to the Amazon rainforest with the footage shot by a lost team of documentarians who were making a film about the area's local cannibal tribes.

Barney Thomson, awkward, diffident, Glasgow barber, lives a life of desperate mediocrity and his uninteresting life is about to go from 0 to 60 in five seconds, as he enters the grotesque and comically absurd world of the serial killer.

After living for over two centuries, Augusto Pinochet is a vampire ready to die… but the vultures around him won't let him go without one last bite.

Don Anselmo, a retired old man, decides to buy a motorized disabled stroller since all his pensioner friends own one. His family strongly refuses him to purchase the vehicle, so don Anselmo decides to take extreme measures to achieve his goal…

Paris, 1930. Luis Buñuel is penniless after the scandal surrounding the release of his last movie. Sculptor Ramón Acín, a good friend, buys a lottery ticket and promises Buñuel that he will pay for his next movie if he wins the prize.

Expert conman Joe Thanks teams up with half-breed Bill and naive Lucy to steal $300,000 from the Indian-hating Major Cabot. Their elaborate plan is full of disguises, double-crosses, and chases, but Joe always seems to know what he's doing.

The U.S. President, low in the opinion polls, gets talked into raising his popularity by trying to start a cold war with Canada.

Set in 1973 Spain, a struggling encyclopedia salesman and his wife take advantage of an offer to make adult films. The act turns him into an aspring legit filmmaker and her into an international sex symbol.

Pioneering documentary maker Philomena Cunk returns with her most ambitious quest to date: venturing right up the universe and everything to examine life and existence in an attempt to find out the point of it all. Along the way, she interrogates experts on subjects from the big bang to biology and art to artificial intelligence. Really get to the nub of it.

Spanish soldiers battle indigenous tribes and their own brutal natures as they search for a legendary city built of gold.

Mexican beauty Camilla hopes to rise above her station by marrying a wealthy American. That is complicated by meeting Arturo Bandini, a first-generation Italian hoping to land a writing career and a blue-eyed blonde on his arm.

As Australian cinema broke through to international audiences in the 1970s through respected art house films like Peter Weir's "Picnic At Hanging Rock," a new underground of low-budget exploitation filmmakers were turning out considerably less highbrow fare. Documentary filmmaker Mark Hartley explores this unbridled era of sex and violence, complete with clips from some of the scene's most outrageous flicks and interviews with the renegade filmmakers themselves.

Jack Rebney is the most famous man you've never heard of - after cursing his way through a Winnebago sales video, Rebney's outrageously funny outtakes became an underground sensation and made him an internet superstar. Filmmaker Ben Steinbauer journeys to the top of a mountain to find the recluse who unwittingly became the "Winnebago Man".

The discovery of the tomb of William Tell’s son in a town in the Basque Country spurs the village's cantankerous citizens to lobby for Swiss annexation.

War photographer W. Eugene Smith travels back to Japan where he documents the devastating effect of mercury poisoning in coastal communities.

A trio of unemployed silent film actors are mistaken for real heroes by a small Mexican village in search of someone to stop a malevolent bandit.

When a young diplomat manages to get the Austrian government to return the Plume of Moctezuma to Mexico for an exhibition, his life quickly falls apart.

Low-level bureaucrat Sam Lowry escapes the monotony of his day-to-day life through a recurring daydream of himself as a virtuous hero saving a beautiful damsel. Investigating a case that led to the wrongful arrest and eventual death of an innocent man instead of wanted terrorist Harry Tuttle, he meets the woman from his daydream, and in trying to help her gets caught in a web of mistaken identities, mindless bureaucracy and lies.

A young Polish filmmaker sets out to find out what happened to Mateusz Birkut, a bricklayer who became a propaganda hero in the 1950s but later fell out of favor and disappeared.

With mesmerizing footage and time lapses of animators at work, this behind-the-scenes special captures the artistry of a unique tale years in the making.

In 1914, the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa invites studios to shoot his actual battles against Porfírio Diaz army to raise funds for financing guns and ammunition. The Mutual Film Corporation, through producer D.W. Griffith, interests for the proposition and sends the filmmaker Frank Thayer to negotiate a contract with Pancho Villa himself.

A rather incoherent post-breakup Sex Pistols "documentary", told from the point of view of Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, whose (arguable) position is that the Sex Pistols in particular and punk rock in general were an elaborate scam perpetrated by him in order to make "a million pounds."

In the California apple country, 900 migratory workers rise 'in dubious battle' against the landowners. The group takes on a life of its own—stronger than its individual members, and more frightening. Led by the doomed Jim Nolan, the strike is founded on his tragic idealism—'courage, never submit, or yield'.

