Event Details
Wed, April 15, 2026
18:00 – 19:30
VILLA SASSETTI
Villa La Pietra
Via Bolognese, 120
50139 Florence, Italy
Film Screening and Discussion
Scenes from Part 1: The Inferno and Part 2: Resurrection
Directed by Ric Burns
Written by Riccardo Bruscagli, Ric Burns
A panel discussion with:
Ric Burns, director & screenwriter
Riccardo Bruscagli, screenwriter
Christine Herring, senior creative adviser
Antonio Fazzini, actor (appearing in the film as Dante)
Moderated by
Eric Nicholson, NYU Florence (appearing in the film as Brunetto Latini)
This special event offers the rare chance to meet, hear, and speak with the creators of a recent award-winning documentary/film on Florence and Italy’s most admired and influential poet. To study Dante, especially in a way that shows the contemporary dramatic vigor and moral/intellectual appeal of his poetry, is to learn about ourselves, and understand our relationships with the world around us.
Dante: Inferno to Paradise is a two-part, four-hour documentary film chronicling the life, work and legacy of the great 14th century Florentine poet, Dante Alighieri, and his epic masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, one of the greatest achievements in the history of Western Literature.
The ambition of the film, which combines powerful dramatic reenactments, colorful interviews with renowned scholars, exquisite archival material and scenic filming, is to bring to life and make accessible, to the widest possible audience, the transformative power and beauty of this singular work of art. The film is divided into two two-hour episodes.
Part One: Inferno explores the historical background of medieval Florence from 1216 to Dante’s birth in 1265, and recounts the dramatic details of Dante’s childhood, education and early literary and political career, culminating in his exile in 1302. The film also examines his decision to begin The Divine Comedy in 1306 – plunging Dante and his readers into the underworld itself where, guided by the great Roman poet, Virgil, he will meet a vast cohort of historical and mythological figures – and arriving finally at the very bottom of hell, in their encounter with Lucifer himself.
Part Two: Resurrection explores Dante’s experience in exile, and his completion of the last two parts of the Comedy, shortly before his death in Ravenna in 1321. Interweaving soaring scenes drawn from Purgatory and Paradise, the film goes on to explore the afterlife and literary and cultural fate of Dante’s masterpiece from the time of his death to today.
The entire film can be viewed in advance through this link
Featured Biographies
Ric Burns
FILMMAKER AND WRITER
Ric Burns is an American documentary filmmaker and writer. He has written, directed and produced historical documentaries since the 1990s, beginning with his collaboration on the celebrated PBS series The Civil War (1990), which he produced with his older brother Ken Burns and wrote with Geoffrey Ward. Since founding Steeplechase Films in 1989, he has directed several programs for WGBH Boston’s American Experience, including Coney Island (1991). Burns has produced and directed the renowned series New York: A Documentary Film (2000), films on Andy Warhol, Oliver Sacks, Ansel Adams, and The Chinese Exclusion Act, and has received The Peabody Award as well as several Emmy Awards.
Riccardo Bruscagli
EMERITUS PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF FLORENCE
Riccardo Bruscagli is Emeritus Professor of Italian Literature at the University of Florence. His entire academic career has been carried out at his Alma Mater: as Assistant Professor, Associate Professor (of Italian Theatrical Literature), and finally, from 1986, Full Professor of Italian Literature. He has held various administrative and governing positions, including Department Director and President of the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy; As a visiting professor, he has taught courses at several universities in other countries: Barnard College, Columbia University; The University of California, Berkeley; Université de Nancy, France. His research activity has been especially dedicated to Italian Renaissance literature, with editions and articles on the chivalric romance tradition (Boiardo, Ariosto, Tasso), on short stories and theatre, and on the work of Machiavelli. In more recent times he has turned his attention to the work of Dante, with essays and a new commentary on the Divine Comedy. He is the co-author, with Ric Burns, of the documentary film Dante: Inferno to Paradise, for which he received, in February 2025, the Prize of the Writers’ Guild of America (WGA). He is a member of the Commissione per I Testi di Lingua di Bologna, of the Accademia Toscana di Scienze e Letteratura ‘La Colombaria,’ and of the Accademie delle Arte del Disegno di Firenze.
Christine Herring
SENIOR CREATIVE ADVISER
After graduating in Italian Studies (Barnard College,1982) under the guide of Furio Colombo, Christine Herring moved to Italy, where she dedicated herself to teaching English in various Schools and Institutions (Wall Street Institute, American School; See C.H., Time on a line, Gowhere Editions, 2000). She has been involved in various projects, initiatives and publications intended to deepen and refine the cultural connections between the Italian and the Anglophone world (President of the Network, Representative of Democrats Abroad), and she has worked as culinary expert in many venues around Florence (see her contribution to the volume Savoring Tuscany, Williams-Sonoma, 2001)
Antonio Fazzini
THEATER AND FILM ACTOR, AND INSTRUCTOR
In theatrical productions he has worked, among others, with Giorgio Albertazzi, with the Algerian writer Assia Djebar, Gigi Dall’Aglio, Giancarlo Cauteruccio, Pier’alli and with Antonio Calenda. He has collaborated with the author and director Stefano Massini (winner of five 2022 Tony Awards), with whom, among other projects, he has created Memorie del boia, L’odore assordante del bianco, and Frankenstein (adapted from Mary Shelley’s novel), all of them written and directed by Massini. He has adapted and performed the monologue La donna fatta a pezzi, based on the story by Assia Djebar, and directed by Filippo Renda, which marked the beginning of an intensive, ongoing collaboration with Renda. For television, he has been part of the casts of Gente di mare, Le ragazze di Sanfrediano, RIS, and Carabinieri. Currently he is employed in the taping of the dramatic series L’allieva 3. For the cinema, he has appeared, among other credits, in Maraviglioso Boccaccio, directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, and in Il sogno del califfo, directed by Souheil Benbarka. In 2024 the American television network PBS released the film-documentary Dante. Inferno to Paradise, directed by Ric Burns, in which he plays the title role of Dante Alighieri. In 2025, he took part in the series Martin Scorsese Presents The Saints.