Costa Botes co-directed Peter Jackson's 1995 mockumentary Forgotten Silver.
The film was created as a fictional documentary about Colin McKenzie, an invented New Zealand filmmaker supposedly responsible for astonishing early cinema achievements. Botes shared directing duties with Jackson and helped shape the documentary investigation that guides the audience through the fabricated story.
Forgotten Silver uses interviews, purported archival footage, location discoveries, and confident narration to imitate television documentary language. Several real New Zealand figures appear as themselves, strengthening the illusion that McKenzie had been a genuine but neglected historical personality.
Jackson and Botes later collaborated on documentary work connected with The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Forgotten Silver is particularly notable because its style was convincing enough that some viewers misunderstood the film as a factual television documentary when it first aired.