Harvard Film Archive Temporarily Closed After Burst Pipe Flooding in Carpenter Center

The Harvard Film Archive will be closed indefinitely after a burst pipe flooded the archive’s collection, theater, and offices on Saturday, according to a Monday email sent to HFA affiliates.

The flooding occurred in the basement of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, which houses the HFA and its collection of over 40,000 audio and visual items and nearly one million photographs and posters. The collection did not experience any significant water damage from the flooding, according to the HFA’s Monday email.

The HFA wrote in another email to affiliates on Wednesday that it will remain closed throughout the weekend “while clean-up and repairs to the building continue.” A reopening date for the HFA has not yet been determined.

Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesperson James M. Chisholm and Harvard Library spokesperson Tenzin Dickie declined to comment on the flooding.

It remains unclear whether the burst pipe was caused by an infrastructural issue in the building.

The HFA, a division of Harvard Library, holds “one of the largest and most significant university-based motion picture collections in the US,” according to the HFA’s website. The HFA seeks to preserve rare film materials and present them in their original form.

In addition to holding screenings for the public, its archives are available to professors and scholars for educational and research purposes.

The Carpenter Center also houses Harvard’s Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, which holds classes in the building and uses its studio space as well as the movie theater.

While the building is undergoing repair, some AFVS classes will be temporarily relocated to the Harvard Art Museums and other sites on campus, according to Director of Administration for the AFVS Department Denise Oberdan.

Oberdan added that for the time being, educational films and materials cannot be screened in their original format because classroom locations outside of the HFA lack the necessary film equipment.

“The Carpenter Center theater is the sole location where all formats can be screened,” Oberdan wrote in an email. “It is central to our curriculum.”

The HFA has also canceled multiple scheduled film screenings in its theater due to the flooding.

A showing of a pair of silent films by the Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse, scheduled for the day of the flooding, was canceled last minute.

The HFA has cancelled multiple upcoming showings, including Gore Vidal’s 1959 film “Suddenly, Last Summer,” an adaptation of Tennesse Williams’ 1958 play of the same name.

The HFA also postponed last Sunday’s showings of “Mangrove” and “Lovers Rock” — two parts of an anthology by British filmmaker Steve McQueen. Mcqueen holds this year’s Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry, a yearlong lectureship awarded to distinguished creatives and artistic scholars.

The HFA notified patrons of the screening cancellations earlier this week, but they will not yet issue refunds due to the possibility of rescheduling the showings.

Ticket holders will be able to transfer their tickets to the new show dates, once the dates have been determined.

A Monday showing of the South Korean drama “The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well” has been rescheduled for November.

Though the re-opening date of the HFA is not scheduled, the Archive wrote in their email that they remain in communication with a disaster team.

“We are waiting to hear from the recovery team to see how soon we can re-open,” the HFA wrote.

—Staff writer Sophie Gao can be reached at sophie.gao@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @sophiegao22.

—Staff writer Alexandra M. Kluzak can be reached at alexandra.kluzak@thecrimson.com.