Forgotten Silver begins with our hero (hehe) Peter Jackson telling us the
tale of how he acquired some old 35mm films from a neighbour (Hanna Mckenzie) of his mother. He tells of exactly where he found them in the neighbour's
shed, and that they were indeed the old movies of her late husband, Colin.
Jackson goes on to tell of discovering the old chest full of movies in rusty
tins that had allegedly been made between the turn of the century and the
late 1920's.

Jackson then takes the reels to film archivest Jonathon Morris for his
perusal and evaluation. Morris begins telling about his job as film archivest
and how grateful he was to have the films for viewing. He claims the collection
as being quite unique in comparison to many of the other films that go through
the archive. Nobody really knows too much at this point about the newly found
films, mostly just word of mouth about the film's producer. They claim him to
be a great artist and cinematographer.

We go on to hear about Colin's upbringing with his family and his early years.
There are interviews with members of his family who are still alive at the time
of the documentary being filmed.. He is described as being introverted in
comparison to his younger brother, with no interest at all in his father's
occupation as a farmer. With an apparent good imagination, Colin finds his true
love, cinema in the spring of 1900. A mobile picture show rolls into their town
and immdiately the young Colin is intrigued and awed by what he sees on the
screen.
Peter Jackson goes on to tell of how impressed he is with the filmmaking skills
of Mckenzie despite the era which they were done. Everyone is thoroughly impressed with his abilities and skill. We hear of his first film escapades.
Then we are introduced to a future acquaintance of Colin's Richard Pierce, who
is believed to have been flying BEFORE the Wright brothers. This flight is
captured on one of Colim's films and is alledgedly being examined by the
Smithsonian. A bit of investigating reveals that Pierce had indeed flown a whole
nine months before the famous Wright brothers flight.

Colin runs away from home at age 15 Colum forms a film company with his younger brother and begins on other films.
There's even one of his films which contains sound in the movie in 1908. He
was allegedly the innovator of adding sound to movies. Unfortunately one of
the films was in a foreign language and wasn't translated with subtitles. On
June 9th, 1912 the two brothers get jailed for 6 months after displaying nude women in their next
film. Their next work was based on the story of Salome and John the Baptist. During
the shooting of this film Colin finds his love in the actress playing Salome.
They even filmed footage of soldier at Gallipoli