John Lennon and Mick Jagger were filmed in 1969

The film was discovered in the archives of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) by the team making a documentary about the late star.

The footage - clips of which are to be screened by the BBC programme Arena on Saturday - captures Lennon and Yoko Ono at their Tittenhurst Park house, Berkshire, in 1969, laughing and playing chess.

The Arena team found the film can, which was marked "miscellaneous", in the archive in Vienna.

The unedited film shows Mick Jagger socialising with Lennon and Ono during filming of the Rock and Roll Circus documentary, about a Rolling Stones' concert in the late 1960s.

Yoko Ono and John Lennon lived at Tittenhurst Park in Berkshire

Intense partnership

It was part of a project that Hans Preiner, a young film-maker working for ORF, was working on during the 1960s.

In 1968, Mr Preiner was in London producing an ORF film on a subject of Lennon and Ono's choice for an Austrian TV series called Avantgarde. They chose the torture of media intrusion as their subject and the film Rape was made.

The lost film was extra footage shot by Mr Preiner to introduce the documentary and reveal the intentions of the concept film.

The Arena documentary Imagine IMAGINE explores the popularity of Lennon's song and re-examines the intense creative partnership between the rock star and concept artist Ono, who is now acknowledged as co-author of the song.

Earlier this year, private film footage of a day in the life of John Lennon sold for $53,775 (�33,235) at auction in New York.

The two reels of film, shot by a student who met the former Beatle on a New York street, was sold to an anonymous bidder.