Yesterday Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum announced that next month, some 44 years after Andy Warhol filmed it, “San Diego Surf,” one of his final film projects, will have its premiere as part of the 10th edition of the Museum of Modern Art’s film preservation festival, To Save and Project. Warhol and Paul Morrissey shot the film in La Jolla, California, just months before Warhol was shot, which effectively ended his career manning a video camera.

The Warhol-directed feature, whose loose narrative centers on an acrimonious married couple played by Superstars Taylor Mead and Viva who rent their beach-side home to a group of surfers, was only partially edited at the time. Morrissey was then commissioned by the Andy Warhol Foundation in 1995-96 to finish editing the film, with the help of Foundation curator Dara Meyers-Kingsley.

“Even twenty five years after his death Warhol continues to surprise contemporary audiences,” Warhol Museum director Eric Shiner said in the premiere announcement yesterday. “This never-before-seen film expands Warhol’s filmic legacy and demonstrates Warhol’s read on the west coast and its surfing culture.”

“San Diego Surf” premieres at MoMA on October 16, and will screen there again from January 23-28, 2013.

— Benjamin Sutton

(Image: Andy Warhol, “San Diego Surf,” 1968/1996, ©2012 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved.)

Tags: Andy Warhol, Andy Warhol Museum, Benjamin Sutton, Museum of Modern Art