Hemingway's House
04' 45"
Publicity: | Literary legend, Ernest Hemingway, enjoyed making trouble almost as much as he did writing books. So chances are, he'd enjoy the fact he's still attracting drama nearly 50 years after his death. |
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| Hemingway lived for more than two decades in a house just outside Havana, the capital of Cuba. |
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| Now falling into disrepair, the building is at the centre of yet another political battle between the US and the Castro regime. |
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| North America correspondent, Michael Rowland reports from Cuba. |
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Cuban shoreline | Music | 00:00 |
| MICHAEL ROWLAND: For the past 50 years, Cuba's relationship with the US has been as tempestuous as the tropical storms that regularly buffet the small island. But there is one American Cubans | 00:04 |
Statue of Hemingway | have always placed on a pedestal. | 00:15 |
Woman on street | CUBAN WOMAN: Ernest Hemingway was a great friend of Cuba. I've read all of his books. He was a father figure for Cubans. | 00:19 |
People on street | Music | 00:26 |
| MICHAEL ROWLAND: Ernest Hemingway spent a large part of his eventful life in Cuba. It's where he wrote some of his most famous books. | 00:32 |
Statue Hemingway by sea | "The Old Man and the Sea" was set in these very waters. Hemingway loved Cuba, and Cubans still idolise him. CUBAN MAN : All his life he was a very strong | 00:40 |
Man on street | person and he, the most important thing was that he tried to communicate to everybody, and to us, the Cuban people, that you should feel always strong and always go on to the end of anything. | 00:50 |
Hemingway's house | MICHAEL ROWLAND: This rambling villa just outside Havana was where Ernest Hemingway lived. ISBEL FERREIRO-GARIT, HEMINGWAY MUSEUM: This is Ernest Hemingway's home. | 01:07 |
Isbel. Super: | It was his decision to live here in this property. He spent more than 20 years living here. | 01:14 |
Inside house | MICHAEL ROWLAND: The house has been preserved just as it was the day Hemingway left Cuba for good in July 1960. Half empty bottles sit next to the writer's favourite chair. Hunting trophies line the walls and his daily weight fluctuations still decorate in the bathroom. | 01:20 |
Isbel shows house | ISBEL FERREIRO-GARIT: And this is Hemingway's (inaudible) bedroom. He used to write standing up. And there you can see his typewriter of course he could do that because he could spend the whole day working. | 01:39 |
| MICHAEL ROWLAND: Isbel Ferreiro-Garit is the deputy director of what's now called the Hemingway Museum. | 01:48 |
Hemingway's typewriter | ISBEL FERREIRO-GARIT: This is the house, the official residence | 01:55 |
Isbel | of one of the most famous writer in the history of literature. | 01:57 |
Stormy sky | Music | 02:00 |
Inside house | MICHAEL ROWLAND: But the house has become yet another flashpoint in the decades old ideological struggle between Cuba and the US. Time and the tropical heat haven't been kind to the 9,000 books and manuscripts that fill the villa. The preservation of this literary treasure trove is a painstaking and expensive process. Financial help from the US is sorely needed, but just as firmly denied, thanks to the trade embargo. | 02:03 |
| STEVE CLEMONS, NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION: I find it absolutely absurd. This is | 02:30 |
Clemons. Super: | really stupid. This harms our own preservation of our own culture and histories. | 02:32 |
Clemons makes speech. Pan across to window | MICHAEL ROWLAND: Steve Clemons, a Washington foreign policy expert and avid Hemingway fan has seen first hand the fragile state of the writer's personal effects. During a recent trip to Cuba, he asked about buying a digital photocopier to scan some of the rare books. | 02:39 |
Books on display in house | STEVE CLEMONS: If I were to help under our current regime to go out | 02:55 |
Clemons. Super: | and get a Chinese or Japanese firm --which would be easy for me to do -- to donate a $35-$50,000 major large book or large memo, digitiser, I would be seriously fined, possibly found guilty, or you know, even conceivably jailed. | 02:58 |
Pool in grounds/House exterior | MICHAEL ROWLAND: The US Government has allow a small team of architects to inspect the House and offer technical advice, but the Bush administration sees the Hemingway house | 03:15 |
Tourists at house | as a tourist attraction. It argues any financial assistance would go directly to the Cuban Government and be in breach of the sanctions. | 03:24 |
Revolutionary poster on street | There was hope the resignation of Fidel Castro would lead to an easing of the embargo, but that hasn't been the case. | 03:33 |
Bush. Super: George W Bush | GEORGE W. BUSH, US PRESIDENT: The Cuban Government recently announced a change at the top. Some in the world marvelled that perhaps change is on its way. That's not how I view it. | 03:40 |
Photo Castro on window | The regime has made empty gestures at reform, but Cuba is still ruled by the same group that has oppressed the Cuban people for almost half a century. | 03:51 |
People on street | STEVE CLEMONS: What we see embedded in a lot of the decisions we have is inertia and the legacy | 04:02 |
Clemons. Super: | of the 1960s and the Cold War which has gone and which has disappeared and we still have vested interests in the United States trying to preserve that Cold War tension for their own purposes. | 04:08 |
Exterior. House | MICHAEL ROWLAND: And that means this living monument to one of the world's greatest writers could slip further into decay. | 04:18 |
Isbel | ISBEL FERREIRO-GARIT: Hemingway was a North American writer, so it belongs to them too. | 04:26 |
Exterior. House | They have to be interested in the | 04:31 |
Photo. Hemingway | preservation of the history and the collection of Hemingway. | 04:34 |
Credits: | Reporter: Michael Rowland | 04:45 |