Director Peter Jackson making World War I film with never-published footage for the Centenary

Director Peter Jackson is working on a World War I documentary to commemorate the centenary.

The acclaimed filmmaker behind The Lord Of The Rings and Hobbit trilogies has been commissioned by the Imperial War Museums to create a programme for the BBC based on unheard stories and perspectives on the war.

The as-yet-unnamed documentary will be made up of archived footage that has been hand-colourised, digitalised and restored for television.

In a statement, Jackson said: “I’ve always been fascinated by the First World War due to my own family history and the Centenary felt like a unique opportunity to make a personal contribution to the commemoration.”

He continued: “I wanted to find a way to bring new life to the stories of ordinary people living through extraordinary times.”

The 56-year-old praised the transformed footage, hailing it as “beyond anything we've ever seen before”, adding “the faces of the men just jump out at you. It's the faces, it's the people, that come to life in this film.”

Concluding, he said: “"We've made a movie to show the experience of what it was like to fight in this war. The human experience of being in the war. A hundred years later we have made up our own minds of what the First World War was like.

"But I think it's going to be very surprising when you listen to the voices of the men that fought the war and were there. What they had to eat, how they slept at night, how they coped with the fear.”

The programme, part of 14-18 NOW commissioned package to commemorate the way, will premiere at the BFI Film Festival before being broadcast on November 11, Armistice Day.