Huffing and puffing on an inflated tire headed toward shore, 75-year-old Melvin Van Peebles spots a woman holding a lantern in the distant shadows. As he approaches, she grows larger but hasn’t moved, and he begins to realize that it’s Lady Liberty, “the mother of all immigrants.” Van Peebles, blaxploitation’s founding father, is actually a 14-year-old posing as a 17-year-old escaping thugs in his latest feature film, Confessionsofa Ex-Doofus-ItchyFooted Mutha. The film screens tonight, Dec. 1, at MoMA along with La Permission (Story of a 3-Day Pass), which also screens Dec. 6, Van Peebles will receive the Gotham Award from the museum and IFP on Dec 2.

Narrated by Van Peebles and originally created as a graphic novel, Confessions’ storyline recounts his youngerself's exploration of the world, in the realm of time travel and childhood themes. Well-traveled in real life, just how autobiographical is Van Peebles’s new film? “What are you trying to do, put me in jail?” he says when I ask, without delving into specifics. Though the filmmaker admits, quoting Tennyson on the topic of authenticity: “We’re part of all that we have met.”

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