The phenomenon of ‘a hundred years of cinema’ has yielded a superfluity of dutiful odes to film history. In droning documentaries, each country remembered its own film pioneers, experts extolled the virtues of forgotten greats and people could taste the past in film fragments. With Costa Botes the maker of satirical splatter films Peter Jackson made such a film for New Zealand, without the hindrance of actually having an early film history. His country didn’t have an early film pioneer, so he could invent him. The result is hilarious. In their widely screened mockumentary Jackson & Botes don’t seem to want to make audiences believe their story is true; for that the approach is too ‘over the top’. They aim their satirical arrows more at the experts and their dutiful documentaries about film history; experts who were all too willing to appear before the camera of the satirical duo. (GjZ)
