On November 4, 1966, heavy rains caused the banks of the Arno River in Florence, Italy to overflow, sending 20-foot floodwaters through the streets of a city world-renowned for its art and cultural collections. The flood left dozens dead, many thousands displaced, and millions of rare books and unique works of art damaged or destroyed.

Renowned Florentine theatre director Franco Zeffirelli was editing his first feature film, The Taming of the Shrew, when the disaster struck, and he swiftly mobilized a crew of collaborators to document the flood and its aftermath: the cars carried away by torrential currents, the thick layers of oil and mud accrued on the walls of the city’s most sacred spaces, the volunteer bucket brigades (known as “mud angels”) passing stacks of waterlogged volumes out of deluged libraries and vaults.

Broadcast on Italian television only 19 days after the flood, FLORENCE: DAYS OF DESTRUCTION mounts a moving and impassioned appeal for a worldwide relief effort, voiced by Welsh actor and Taming of the Shrew star Richard Burton. Exported around the world, the documentary helped generate $20 million for a recovery effort that is widely cited today as the birth of modern library conservation.