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Florence days of destruction

Apr 24

2026

Block Cinema: Northwestern University Evanston, IL

Tickets
with

Melina Avery

Senior Conservator, University of Chicago’s Joe and Rika Mansueto Library

and

Dr. Jayme Collins

Postdoctoral Fellow, Northwestern’s Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities

Florence: Days of Destruction (Per Firenze)— Protecting Cultural Heritage From the Impacts of Climate Change

Renowned Italian director Franco Zeffirelli’s only documentary, FLORENCE: DAYS OF DESTRUCTION captures the catastrophic flood that damaged his home city’s most precious cultural collections–and gave birth to the modern science of library conservation. This rare presentation of an original 35mm print will feature introductions and discussions with library conservator Melina Avery and Jayme Collins, PhD, a scholar and documentarian researching climate impacts on cultural collections.

FLORENCE: DAYS OF DESTRUCTION has been infrequently seen in the 60 years since its release, and has not itself been preserved. For this rare presentation of an original 35mm print, Block Cinema will welcome Melina Avery, senior conservator at University of Chicago’s Joe and Rika Mansueto Library, and Dr. Jayme Collins, postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern’s Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, to introduce and discuss the film, which still holds lessons for conservators and researchers invested in protecting cultural heritage from the impacts of climate change almost 60 years after its release.

Block Cinema: Northwestern University Evanston, IL

Tickets

Film Synopsis

After the great flood in Florence, Italy in 1966 Zeffirelli and a film crew arrive to document the devastation and recovery efforts.

    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.

    About the Speaker

    Melina Avery is Senior Conservator and Interim Head of Conservation at the University of Chicago Library. She focuses on conservation treatment and technical analysis of the library's distinctive collections. Melina holds a Masters of Art Conservation from Queen's University, an MSLIS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a BA from Sarah Lawrence College. Melina started her conservation training in the Sarah Lawrence in Florence program, working with conservators from the Opificio delle Pietre Dure during her junior year of college. Melina has worked at the University of Chicago for 13 years, and previously completed internships and fellowships at Northwestern University Library, the Sheridan Libraries and Museums at Johns Hopkins University, the Jewish Museum of Maryland, the National Archives and Records Administration, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University.

    Dr. Jayme Collins, postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern’s Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities. Jayme Collins leads the Public Humanities Graduate Practicum. Her research encompasses topics in literary studies and environmental humanities and appears in academic and public venues. She has two active research projects: A book project called Composing in the Field recovers a genealogy of experimental material poetics since 1960 that engage with discrete transformations in land use and management over the period, and a book and audio documentary project called Archival Ecologies tells stories about how communities are grappling with the endangerment and loss of large and small cultural collections caused by climate change-exacerbated natural disasters. Prior to joining Kaplan, Dr. Collins was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University, where she was a project leader at Blue Lab, an environmental storytelling and research group. You can find her work wherever you get your podcasts, as well as in Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Inscription: The Journal of Material Text, Wordsworth Circle, and Edge Effects.