Unseen Velvet Underground Warhol Film at MoMA

[LoathesomeCowboyBill]

https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/11143

To Save and Project ends with a bang with the world premiere of never-before-seen Andy Warhol film rarities, presented in association with the MoMA exhibition Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography. In 2024 Katie Trainor, MoMA’s film collections manager, and Greg Pierce, the Andy Warhol Museum’s then-director of film and video, worked together with Colorlab to process more than eighty 100-foot rolls of unprocessed black-and-white and color film left untouched by Warhol and his associates from the early days of Andy Warhol’s Factory filmmaking. Some 60 years after the rolls were exposed to light, what they uncovered was beautifully grainy raw footage from material shot for Sleep, Kiss, Batman Dracula, and Couch, as well as five unseen Screen Test portraits featuring Factory regulars like Naomi Levine and the lately lamented Sally Kirkland, along with others we invite the audience to help identify. The footage also captures Warhol’s wanderings throughout the Frank Stella opening at the Leo Castelli Gallery on January 4, 1964, as well as explicit material shot on the Factory couch and in the Factory stairwell. And as an added bonus, five film rolls shot by Factory cinematographer Danny Williams showcasing Gerard Malanga, Paul Morrissey, Edie Sedgwick, the Velvet Underground, and Andy Warhol will also be seen for the first time.

[Mark]

Obviously any new VU content isn't a bad thing and I'm looking forward to seeing what this is... but if it's yet more grainy silent snippets of them hanging round at the Factory, I can't say I'm especially excited about the prospect. As Moe says, it's crazy that with all the filming that was going on, they never just put a camera on a tripod for an hour and recorded a show.

[LoathesomeCowboyBill]

Assuming the footage is shot on 8mm or Super 8mm a single roll is only 3-4mins long

[iaredatsun]

Assuming the footage is shot on 8mm or Super 8mm a single roll is only 3-4mins long

Super 8 is typically only 50’ to a roll. I’d expect this to be 100’ rolls of 16mm.

Thanks for the link.

[simonm]

Reading carefully, they don't say the Danny Williams films are part of this newly processed material, only that they are "an added bonus"

The Williams VU footage would probably be the jerky stop-start silent b/w stuff used in the Walk Into The Sea film, or similar? I think there was a few seconds of it in the the Todd Haynes doc too, but I don't think it's been screened in its original form before, so in that respect it's 'never before seen'?

[Dud999]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/29/arts ... -moma.html

One recently developed roll is of the VU and Warhol traveling to a show in March 1966

[iaredatsun]

If only this kind of stuff got a wider easier to access release.

[falconwhit]

Who thought a screening on a Monday afternoon made sense?

Some people, they like to go to the museum
And other peoples, they have to work
(just like me!)

Hopefully someone will be able to go and post the relevant snippet somewhere.

[LoathesomeCowboyBill]

630, not exactly mid afternoon. I am headed up after work so will report back.

For years the best and only film programming at MoMA was at 1pn or 3pm. The best film program in the world catering exclusively to retirees, tourists and unemployed losers. Proud to say I found myself in the latter group fir a brief period of time.

[falconwhit]

630, not exactly mid afternoon. I am headed up after work so will report back.

For years the best and only film programming at MoMA was at 1pn or 3pm. The best film program in the world catering exclusively to retirees, tourists and unemployed losers. Proud to say I found myself in the latter group fir a brief period of time.

Indeed, but it meant afternoon for me as I also had to consider my commute time to get there.

How was it? Anything interesting?