CinemaItaliaUK presents: Umberto Eco: The Library of the World

The screening will be followed by a live discussion between the film's director Davide Ferrario and the director of the Warburg Institute Bill Sherman.

Umberto Eco’s private library was a world apart: more than 30,000 contemporary books and 1,500 ancient and rare books. After his death, the family granted access to the library to director Davide Ferrario, who had worked with Eco in 2015, one year before the writer’s death, for a video-installation at the Art Biennale of Venice. Slowly, from the very simple idea of filming the library before it was given to the Italian State and therefore moved from its original place, a project was born to make a feature documentary: not only to describe an extraordinary location, but also to explain Eco’s idea and feeling of the library as “memory of the world”.

Combining archive material of Eco with contemporary footage, the film presents us with a labyrinth of ideas - discussions of truth and meaning, the form and function of memory and the role of fiction in shaping reality. We see Eco citing Spiderman, Shakespeare, Borges, and Dan Brown with his characteristic blend of intellectual rigour, open curiosity and light-heartedness whilst his family and scholars pour over the book collection that shaped one of the great thinkers of the 20th century.

CinemaItaliaUK's Mission is to raise awareness of Italian culture by promoting Italian films that go beyond the traditional genres, and to ultimately stimulate and encourage cultural integration.