ARCHIVAL EVENT: Moi-même
Moi-même
a film by
Mojo Lorwin & Lee Breuer, 1968/2024
NY Premiere
Thursday, February 27, 2025 @ Florence Gould Theater
______________________________________
In 1968 Paris, Lee Breuer, along with future members of the legendary downtown experimental theater company, Mabou Mines, shot an unscripted, silent satire following a thirteen-year-old boy named Kevin (Kevin Mathewson) attempting to make a film against the backdrop of the events of the May student uprising. Abandoned as unfinished, the project was resurrected by Breuer’s son, filmmaker Mojo Lorwin, who began restoring and re-imagining the unfinished film in the last year of his father’s life
Moi-même features a cameo by Jean-Luc Godard, footage of the student protesters outside the Sorbonne, and early performances from several of the original members of Mabou Mines including Ruth Maleczech, David Warrilow, and Fred Neumann, also known for their interpretations of Samuel Beckett’s work.
Faced with hours of unedited silent film (Breuer’s original intention had been to dub the film later), Lorwin spent three years writing a script, editing the picture, and working with a number of voice actors, musicians, and sound professionals to create a feature film out of the raw footage.
A collaboration between father and son across half a century, Moi-même is both a lost 60s arthouse film and a new experimental film in its own right, which uses the original footage to tell a story about the political and artistic legacy of the 60s in our time and to explore the meaning of abandoned projects.
Moi-même is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.