Michael Ritchie '60, the director of "Downhill Racer," is using the Harvard search for "unknown" leads for the movie community as a hunting ground in his "3 Lives for Mississippi."

Ritchie and the writer, Jean-Claude van Itallie '58, are looking for men and women without any previous acting experience in order to gain as much documentary realism as possible.

Senior Rob Cohen will do the casting at Harvard this week. Cohen, who is now working on his third full-length film, will hold interviews in Quincy 614 tonight and Thursday night from 7 to 10 p. m. and again on Friday afternoon from 1 to 4.

The film, which has a "relatively large budget," according to Ritchie, will portray the murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964. The killing was conceived and carried out by two dozen leading citizens of Meridian and Neshoba counties, including lawmen, clergymen and businessmen.

The movie is "conceived of as a political film with an even wider canvas than "Z'," Ritchie said. He went on to say that "the film is not intended as a memorial or curio but as a story with great significance for the 1970's."